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Pi-iee    1O    Oents. 


AN  ADDRESS 


BY    THE 


HO:NT.  JOSEPH  HOLT, 


TO  THE  PEOPLE  OF  KENTUCKY, 


I'KLIVKKKD   AT   LOUISVILLE,    JULY    ISrn.    1861: 


ALSO 


HIS    LTCTTEK,   TO   J.  F.  SPEED,   ESQ. 


NEW  YORK: 

JAMES    G.    GREGORY, 

1  s  I  •  (    ( •  E  6  S  0  R     TO     W'.     A  .     T  O  TV  >T  8  E  N  D     &     CO-; 

NO.  46  WALKER  STREET. 
1861. 


PROSPECTUS. 


ELEGANT    HOUSEHOLD  EDITION 

OF    THE 

\VORKS    OF    CHARLES    DICKENS, 

Illustrated  from  Drawings  made  expressly  for  this  Edition, 

Br  F.  O.  C.  DARLEY  AND  JOHN  GILBERT. 
Executed  on  Steel,  in  Pure  Line  and  Etching,  by  Eminent  Engravers. 


The  subscriber  will  commence,  March  ist,  1861,  the  issue  of 
an  entirely  new  edition  of  Dickens'  Novels,  from  new  stereotype 
plates,  printed  by  HOUGHTON,  at  the  "Riverside  Press,"  Cambridge, 
on  superior  laid  paper,  in  style  and  form  similar  to  TICKNOR  &  FIELDS' 
POPULAR  HOUSEHOLD  EDITION  OF  THE  WAVERLEY  NOVELS.  Great 
pains  have  been  taken  by  the  publisher  to  render  this  edition  of 
Dickens'  Works  the  most  perfect  scries  of  books  ever  issued  in  Ameri 
ca.  The  original  drawings  by  DARLEY,  whose  designs  for  the  Illus 
trated  Edition  of  Cooper's  Novels  have  been  so  distinguished,  2nd 
the  drawings  by  JOHN  GILBERT,  the  foremost  of  English  artists  (this 
being  the  first  time  Mr.  Gilbert  has  contributed  original  drawings  to 
an  American  publication),  will  give  this  edition  a  value  possessed  by 
no  other,  either  English  or  American. 

THE    PUBLICATION    WILL    COMMENCE    WITH 

PICKWICK  PAPERS, 

IN  FOUR  VOLUMES,  i6mo.       Price  75  cents  per  volume. 

It  is  the  intention  of  the  Publisher  to  issue  a  complete  novel  in 
two  or  more  volumes  on  the  first  of  each  month,  and  to  complete  the 
series  in  50  volumes. 

JAMES  G.   GREGORY,   PUBLISHER, 

(Successor  to  W.   A    Townsend  &  Co.,) 

NO.  46  WALKER  STREET,  N.  Y. 


THE    FALLACY   OF    NEUTRALITY. 


AN  ADDRESS 


BY   THE 


HON.  JOSEPH  HOLT, 

M 


TO  THE  PEOPLE.  OF  KENTUCKY, 


DELIVERED    AT    LOUISVILLE,    JULY    13TH,    18G1 


ALSO 


HIS  LETTER  TO  J.  F.  SPEED,  ESQ. 


NEW  YORK: 
JAMES   G.   GREGORY, 

(SUCCESSOR    TOW.    A.    TOWNSEND    &    CO.,) 

NO.  46  WALKER  STREET. 
1861. 


C       A.     A  L  V  O  R  I>       PRINTER. 


ADDRESS  OF  HON.  JOSEPH  HOLT. 


Mr.  HOLT  was  next  introduced  to  the  audience  by  Hon.  HENRY  PIRTLE, 
who  addressed  him  a  few  words  of  welcome. 

Then  taking  the  stand,  amid  prolonged  cheers,  Mr.  HOLT  spoke  as  fol 
lows  : — 

JUDGE  PIRTLE  :  I  beg  you  to  be  assured  that  I  am  most  thankful  for  this  dis 
tinguished  and  flattering  welcome,  and  for  every  one  of  the  kind  words  which 
have  just  fallen  from  your  lips,  as  I  am  for  the  hearty  response  they  have 
received.  Spoken  by  anybody  and  anywhere,  these  words  would  have  been 
cherished  by  me ;  but  spoken  by  yourself  and  in  the  presence  and  on  behatf 
of  those  in  whose  midst  I  commenced  the  battle  of  life,  whose  friendship^ 
have  ever  labored  to  deserve,  and  in  whose  fortunes  I  have  ever  felt  the  live 
liest  sympathy,  they  are  doubly  grateful  to  my  feelings.  I  take  no  credit  to 
myself  for  loving  and  being  faithful  to  such  a  government  as  this,  or  for  ut 
tering,  as  I  do,  with  every  throb  of  my  existence,  a  prayer  for  its  preserva 
tion.  In  regard  to  my  official  conduct,  to  which  you  have  alluded  with  such 
earnest  and  generous  commendation,  I  must  say  that  no  merit  can  be  accorded 
to  me  beyond  that  of  having  humbly  but  sincerely  struggled  to  perform  a 
public  duty,  amid  embarrassments  which  the  world  can  never  fully  know. 
In  reviewing  what  is  past,  I  have  and  shall  ever  have  a  bitter  sorrow,  that, 
while  I  was  enabled  to  accomplish  so  little  in  behalf  of  our  betrayed  and  suf 
fering  country,  others  were  enabled  to  accomplish  so  much  against  it.  You 
do  me  exceeding  honor  in  associating  me  in  your  remembrance  with  the  hero 
of  Fort  Sumter.  There  is  about  his  name  an  atmosphere  of  light  that  can 
never  grow  dim.  Surrounded  with  his  little  band,  by  batteries  of  treason  and 
by  infuriated  thousands  of  traitors,  the  fires  upon  the  altar  of  patriotism  at 
which  he  ministered,  only  waxed  the  brighter  for  the  gloom  that  enveloped 
him.  and  history  will  never  forget  that  it  was  from  these  fires  that  was  kin 
dled  that  conflagration  that  now  blazes  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  land.  Brave  among  the  bravest,  incorruptible  and  unconquerable  in  his 
loyalty,  amid  all  the  perplexities  and  trials  and  sore  humiliations  that  beset 
him,  he  well  deserves  that  exalted  position  in  the  affections  and  confidence  of 


iv!£07968 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

the  people  that  he  now  enjoys ;  and  while  none  have  had  better  opportuni 
ties  of  knowing  this  than  myself,  so  I  am  sure  that  none  could  have  a  prouder 
joy  in  bearing  testimony  to  it  than  I  have  to-night. 

FELLOW-CITIZEXS  :  A  few  weeks  since,  in  another  form,  I  ventured  freely 
to  express  my  views  upon  those  tragic  events  which  have  brought  sorrow  to 
every  hearthstone  and  to  every  heart  in  our  distracted  country,  and  it  is  not 
my  purpose  on  this  occasion  to  repeat  those  views,  or  to  engage  in  any  ex 
tended  discussion  of  the  questions  then  examined.  It  is  not  necessary  that 
I  should  do  so,  since  the  argument  is  exhausted,  and  the  popular  mind  is  per 
fectly  familiar  with  it  in  all  its  bearings.  I  will,  however,  with  your  permis 
sion,  submit  a  few  brief  observations  upon  the  absorbing  topics  of  the  day, 
and  if  I  do  so  with  an  earnestness  and  emphasis  due  alike  to  the  sincerity  of 
my  convictions  and  to  the  magnitude  of  the  interests  involved,  it  is  trusted 
that  none  will  be  offended,  not  even  those  who  may  most  widely  differ  from 
me. 

Could  one,  an  entire  stranger  to  our  history,  now  look  down  upon  the 
South,  and  see  there  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men  march 
ing  in  hostile  array,  threatening  the  capture  of  the  capital  and  the  dismem 
berment  of  the  territory  of  the  republic ;  and  could  he  look  again  and  see 
that  this  army  is  marshalled  and  directed  by  officers  recently  occupying  dis- 
^jiguished  -places  in  the  civil  and  military  service  of  the  country;  and  further 
that  the  states  from  which  this  army  has  been  drawn  appear  to  be  one  vast, 
seething  cauldron  of  ferocious  passion,  he  would  very  naturally  conclude  that 
the  government  of  the  United  States  had  committed  some  great  crime  against 
its  people,  and  that  this  uprising  was  in  resistance  to  wrong  and  outrages 
which  had  been  borne  until  endurance  was  no  longer  possible.  And  yet  no 
conclusion  could  be  further  from  the  truth  than  this.  The  government  of  the 
United  States  has  been  faithful  to  all  its  constitutional  obligations.  For 
eighty  years  it  has  maintained  the  national  honor  at  home  and  abroad,  and 
by  its  prowess,  its  wisdom,  and  its  justice,  has  given  to  the  title  of  an  Amer 
ican  citizen  an  elevation  among  the  nations  of  the  earth  which  the  citizens  of 
no  republic  has  enjoyed  since  Rome  was  mistress  of  the  world.  Under  its 
administration  the  national  domain  has  stretched  away  to  the  Pacific,  and  that 
constellation  which  announced  our  birth  as  a  people,  has  expanded  from  thir 
teen  to  thirty-four  stars,  all,  until  recently,  moving  undisturbed  and  undimmed 
in  their  orbs  of  light  and  grandeur.  The  rights  of  no  states  have  been  in 
vaded  ;  no  man's  property  has  been  despoiled,  no  man's  liberty  abridged,  no 
man's  life  oppressively  jeopardized  by  the  action  of  this  government.  Under 
its  benign  influences  the  rills  of  public  and  private  prosperity  have  swelled 
into  rivulets,  and  from  rivulets  into  rivers  ever  brimming  in  their  fullness, 
and  everywhere,  and  at  all  periods  of  its  history,  its  ministrations  have  fallen 
as  gently  on  the  people  of  the  United  States  as  do  the  dews  of  a  Summer's 
night  on  the  flowers  and  grass  of  the  gardens  and  fields. 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  5 

"Whence,  then,  this  revolutionary  outbreak  ?  Whence  the  secret  spring  of 
this  gigantic  conspiracy,  which,  like  some  huge  boa.  had  completely  coiled 
itself  around  the  limbs  and  body  of  the  republic,  before  a  single  hand  was 
lifted  to  resist  it  ?  Strange,  and  indeed  startling,  as  the  announcement  must 
appear  when  it  falls  on  the  ears  of  the  next  generation,  the  national  tragedy, 
in  whose  shadow  we  stand  to-night,  has  come  upon  us  because,  in  November 
last,  JOHN  C.  BRECKINRIDGE  was  not  elected  President  of  the  United  States, 
and  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  was.  This  is  the  whole  story.  And  I  would  pray 
now  to  know  on  what  was  JOHN  G.  BRECKINRIDGE  fed  that  he  has  grown  so 
great,  that  a  republic  founded  by  WASHINGTON  and  cemented  by  the  best 
blood  that  has  ever  coursed  in  human  veins,  is  to  be  overthrown  because,  for 
sooth,  he  cannot  be  its  President  ?  Had  he  been  chosen  we  well  know  that 
we  should  not  have  heard  of  this  rebellion,  for  the  lever  with  which  it  is  being 
moved  would  have  been  wanting  to  the  hands  of  the  conspirators.  Even 
after  his  defeat,  could  it  have  been  guaranteed,  beyond  all  peradventure,  that 
JEFF.  DAVIS,  or  some  other  kindred  spirit,  would  be  the  successor  of  Mr.  LIN 
COLN,  I  presume  we  hazard  nothing  in  assuming  that  this  atrocious  move 
ment  against  the  government  would  not  have  been  set  on  foot.  So  much  for 
the  principle  involved  in  it.  This  great  crime,  then,  with  which  we  are  grap 
pling,  sprang  from  that  "sin  by  which  the  angels  fell" — an  unmastered  and 
profligate  ambition — an  ambition  that  "  would  rather  reign  in  hell  than  serve 
in  heaven" — that  would  rather  rule  supremely  over  a  shattered  fragment  of 
the  republic  than  run  the  chances  of  sharing  with  others  the  honors  of  the 
whole. 

The  conspirators  of  the  South  read  in  the  election  of  Mr.  LINCOLN  a  de 
claration  that  the  Democratic  party  had  been  prostrated,  if  not  finally  de 
stroyed,  by  the  selfish  intrigues  and  corruptions  of  its  leaders ;  they  read, 
too,  that  the  vicious,  emaciated,  and  spavined  hobby  of  the  slavery  agitation, 
on  which  they  had  so  often  rode  into  power,  could  no  longer  carry  them  be 
yond  a  given  geographical  line  of  our  territory,  and  that  in  truth  this  factious 
and  treasonable  agitation,  on  which  so  many  of  them  had  grown  great  by  de 
bauching  and  denationalizing  the  mind  of  a  people  naturally  generous  and 
patriotic,  had  run  its  course,  and  hence,  that  from  the  national  disgust  for 
this  demagogueing,  and  for  the  inexorable  law  of  population,  the  time  had 
come  when  all  those  who  had  no  other  political  capital  than  this,  would  have 
to  prepare  for  retirement  to  private  life,  so  far  at  least  as  the  highest  offices 
of  the  country  were  concerned.  Under  the  influence  of  these  grim  discour 
agements  they  resolved  to  consummate  at  once — what  our  political  history 
shows  to  have  been  a  long-cherished  purpose — the  dismemberment  of  the 
government.  They  said  to  themselves  :  "  Since  we  can  no  longer  monopo 
lize  the  great  offices  of  the  republic  as  we  have  been  accustomed  to  do,  we 
will  destroy  it  and  build  upon  its  ruins  an  empire  that  shall  be  all  our  own, 
and  whose  spoils  neither  the  North  nor  the  East  nor  the  West  shall  share 


6  THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

with  us."  Deplorable  and  humiliating  as  this  certainly  is,  it  is  but  a  re 
hearsal  of  the  sad,  sad  story  of  the  past.  We  had,  indeed,  supposed  that 
under  our  Christian  civilization  we  had  reached  a  point  in  human  progress, 
when  a  republic  could  exist  without  having  its  life  sought  by  its  own  off 
spring  ;  but  the  Catilines  of  the  South  have  proved  that  we  were  mistaken. 
Let  no  man  imagine  that  because  this  rebellion  has  been  made  by  men  re 
nowned  in  our  civil  and  military  history,  that  it  is,  therefore,  the  less  guilty 
or  the  less  courageously  to  be  resisted.  It  is  precisely  this  class  of  men  who 
have  subverted  the  best  governments  that  have  ever  existed.  The  purest 
spirits  that  have  lived  in  the  tide  of  times,  the  noblest  institutions  that  have 
arisen  to  bless  our  race,  have  found  among  those  in  whom  they  had  most 
confided,  and  whom  they  had  most  honored,  men  wicked  enough,  either  se 
cretly  to  betray  them  unto  death,  or  openly  to  seek  their  overthrow  by  law 
less  violence.  The  republic  of  England  had  its  Monk;  the  republic  of 
France  had  its  BONAPARTE;  the  republic  of  Rome  had  its  C^SAR  and  its 
CATILINE,  and  the  Saviour  of  the  world  had  his  Judas  Iscariot.  It  cannot 
be  necessary  that  I  should  declare  to  you,  for  you  know  them  well,  who 
they  are  whose  parricidal  swords  are  now  unsheathed  against  the  republic 
of  the  United  States.  Their  names  are  inscribed  upon  a  scroll  of  infamy 
that  can  never  perish.  The  most  distinguished  of  them  were  educated  by 
the  charity  of  the  government  on  which  they  are  now  making  war.  For 
long  years  they  were  fed  from  its  table,  and  clothed  from  its  wardrobe,  and 
had  their  brows  garlanded  by  its  honors.  They  are  the  ungrateful  sons  of  a 
fond  mother,  who  dandled  them  upon  her  knee,  who  lavished  upon  them  the 
gushing  love  of  her  noble  and  devoted  nature,  and  who  nurtured  them  from 
the  very  bosom  of  her  life ;  and  now,  in  the  frenzied  excesses  of  a  licentious 
and  baffled  ambition,  they  are  stabbing  at  that  bosom  with  the  ferocity  with 
which  the  tiger  springs  upon  his  prey.  The  President  of  the  United  States 
is  heroically  and  patriotically  struggling  to  baffle  the  machinations  of  these 
most  wicked  men.  I  have  unbounded  gratification  in  knowing  that  he  has 
the  courage  to  look  traitors  in  the  face,  and  that,  in  discharging  the  duties 
of  his  great  office,  he  takes  no  counsel  of  his  fears,  lie  is  entitled  to  the 
zealous  support  of  the  whole  country,  and,  may  I  not  add  without  offence, 
that  ho  will  receive  the  support  of  all  who  justly  appreciate  the  boundless 
blessings  of  our  free  institutions  ? 

If  this  rebellion  succeeds  it  will  involve  necessarily  the  destruction  of  our 
nationality,  the  division  of  our  territory,  the  permanent  disruption  of  the  re 
public.  It  must  rapidly  dry  up  the  sources  of  our  material  prosperity,  and 
year  by  year  we  shall  grow  more  and  more  impoverished,  more  and  more 
revolutionary,  enfeebled,  and  debased.  Each  returning  election  will  bring 
with  it  grounds  for  new  civil  commotions,  and  traitors,  prepared  to  strike  at 
the  country  that  has  rejected  their  claims  to  power,  will  spring  up  on  every 
side.  Disunion  once  begun  will  go  on  and  on  indefinitely,  and  under  the  in- 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  7 

ttuence  of  the  fatal  doctrine  of  secession,  not  only  will  states  secede  from 
states,  but  counties  will  secede  from  states  also,  and  towns  and  cities  from 
counties,  until  universal  anarchy  will  be  consummated  in  each  individual 
who  can  make  good  his  position  by  force  of  arms,  claiming  the  right  to  defy 
the  power  of  the  government.  Thus  we  should  have  brought  back  to  us 
the  days  of  the  robber  barons  with  their  moated  castles  and  marauding  re 
tainers.  This  doctrine  when  analyzed  is  simply  a  declaration  that  no  phys 
ical  force  shall  ever  be  employed  in  executing  the  laws  or  upholding  the 
government,  and  a  government  into  whose  practical  administration  such  a 
principle  has  been  introduced,  could  no  more  continue  to  exist  than  a  man 
could  live  with  an  angered  cobra  in  his  bosom.  If  you  would  know  what 
are  the  legitimate  fruits  of  secession,  look  at  Virginia  and  Tennessee,  which 
have  so  lately  given  themselves  up  to  the  embrace  of  this  monster.  There  the 
schools  are  deserted ;  the  courts  of  justice  closed ;  public  and  private  credit 
destroyed ;  commerce  annihilated,  debts  repudiated ;  confiscations  and  spo 
liations  everywhere  prevailing ;  every  cheek  blanched  with  fear,  and  every 
heart  frozen  with  despair ;  and  all  over  that  desolated  land  the  hand  of  in 
furiated  passion  and  crime  is  waving,  with  a  vulture's  scream  for  blood,  the 
sword  of  civil  war.  And  this  is  the  Pandemonium  which  some  would  have 
transferred  to  Kentucky. 

But  I  am  not  here  to  discuss  this  proposition  to-night.  I  wish  solemnly 
to  declare  before  you  and  the  world,  that  I  am  for  this  Union  without  con 
ditions,  one  and  indivisible,  now  and  forever.  I  am  for  its  preservation  at 
any  and  every  cost  of  blood  and  treasure  against  all  its  assailants.  I  know 
no  neutrality  between  my  country  and  its  foes,  whether  they  be  foreign  or 
domestic ;  no  neutrality  between  that  glorious  flag  which  now  floats  over  us. 
and  the  ingrates  and  traitors  who  would  trample  it  in  the  dust.  My  prayer 
is  for  victory,  complete,  enduring  and  overwhelming,  to  the  armies  of  the 
republic  over  all  its  enemies.  I  am  against  any  and  every  compromise  that 
may  be  proposed  to  be  made  under  the  guns  of  the  rebels,  while,  at  the 
same  time,  I  am  decidedly  in  favor  of  affording  every  reasonable  guarantee 
for  the  safety  of  Southern  institutions,  which  the  honest  convictions  of  the 
people — not  the  conspirators — of  the  South  may  demand,  whenever  they  shall 
lay  down  their  arms,  but  not  until  then.  The  arbitrament  of  the  sword  has 
been  defiantly  thrust  into  the  face  of  the  government  and  country,  and  there 
is  no  honorable  escape  from  it.  All  guarantees  and  all  attempts  at  adjust 
ment  by  amendments  to  the  constitution  are  now  scornfully  rejected,  and 
the  leaders  of  the  rebellion  openly  proclaim  that  they  are  fighting  for  their 
independence.  In  this  contemptuous  rejection  of  guarantees,  and  in  this 
avowal  of  the  objects  of  the  rebellion  now  so  audaciously  made,  we  have  a 
complete  exposure  of  that  fraud  which,  through  the  slavery  agitation,  has 
been  practised  upon  the  public  credulity  for  the  last  fifteen  or  twenty  years.  In 
the  light  of  this  revelation,  we  feel  as  one  awakened  from  the  suffocating 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

tortures  of  a  nightmare,  and  realize  what  a  baseless  dream  our  apprehen 
sions  have  been,  and  of  what  a  traitorous  swindle  we  have  been  made  the 
victims.  They  are  fighting  for  their  independence !  Independence  of  what  ? 
Independence  of  those  laws  which  they  themselves  have  aided  in  enacting ; 
independence  of  that  constitution  which  their  fathers  framed  and  to  which 
they  are  parties  and  subject  by  inheritance ;  independence  of  that  beneficent 
government  on  whose  treasury  and  honors  they  have  grown  strong  and 
illustrious.  When  a  man  commits  a  robbery  on  the  highway,  or  a  murder  in 
the  dark,  he  thereby  declares  his  independence  of  the  laws  under  which  he 
lives,  and  of  the  society  of  which  he  is  a  member.  Should  he,  when  ar 
raigned,  avow  and  justify  the  offence,  he  thereby  becomes  the  advocate  of 
the  independence  he  has  thus  declared ;  and,  if  he  resists  by  force  of  arms 
the  officer,  when  dragging  him  to  the  prison,  the  penitentiary,  or  the  gallows, 
he  is  thereby  fighting  for  the  independence  he  has  thus  declared  and  advo 
cated  ;  and  such  is  the  condition  of  the  conspirators  of  the  South  at  this  mo 
ment.  It  is  DO  longer  a  question  of  Southern  rights,  which  have  never  been 
violated,  nor  of  security  of  Southern  institutions,  which  we  know  perfectly 
well  have  never  been  interfered  with  by  the  general  government,  but  it  is 
purely  with  us  a  question  of  national  existence.  In  meeting  this  terrible 
issue  which  rebellion  lias  made  up  with  the  loyal  men  of  the  country,  we 
stand  upon  ground  infinitely  above  all  party  lines  and  party  platforms — 
ground  as  sublime  as  that  on  which  our  fathers  stood  when  they  fought  the 
battles  of  the  revolution.  I  am  for  throwing  into  the  contest  thus  forced 
upon  us  all  the  material  and  moral  resources  and  energies  of  the  nation,  in 
order  that  the  struggle  may  be  brief  and  as  little  sanguinary  as  possible. 
It  is  hoped  that  we  shall  soon  see  in  the  field  half  a  million  of  patriotic 
volunteers,  marching  in  columns  which  will  be  perfectly  irresistible,  and, 
borne  in  their  hands — for  no  purpose  of  conquest  or  subjugation,  but  of  pro 
tection  only — we  may  expect  within  nine  months  to  see  the  stars  and 
stripes  floating  in  every  Southern  breeze,  and  hear  going  up,  wild  as  the 
storm,  the  exultant  shout  of  that  emancipated  people  over  their  deliverance 
from  the  revolutionary  terror  and  despotism,  by  which  they  are  now  tor 
mented  and  oppressed.  The  war,  conducted  on  such  a  scale,  will  not  cost 
exceeding  four  or  five  hundred  millions  of  dollars ;  and  none  need  be  startled 
at  the  vastness  of  this  expenditure.  The  debt  thus  created  will  press  but 
slightly  upon  us ;  it  will  be  paid  and  gladly  paid  by  posterity,  who  will  make 
the  best  bargain  which  has  been  made  since  the  world  began,  if  they  can  se 
cure  to  themselves,  in  its  integrity  and  blessings,  such  a  government  as  this, 
at  such  a  cost.  But,  if  in  this  anticipation  we  are  doomed  to  disappoint 
ment  ;  if  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  already  become  so  degenerate 
— may  I  not  say  so  craven — in  the  presence  of  their  foes  as  to  surrender  up 
this  republic  to  be  dismembered  and  subverted  by  the  traitors  who  have 
reared  the  standard  of  revolt  against  it,  then,  I  trust,  the  volume  of  Amen- 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  9 

can  history  will  be  closed  and  sealed  up  forever,  and  that  those  who  shall 
survive  this  national  humiliation  will  take  unto  themselves  some  other  name, 
— some  name  having  no  relation  to  the  past,  no  relation  to  our  great  ances 
tors,  no  relation  to  those  monuments  and  battle-fields  which  commemorate 
alike  their  heroism,  their  loyalty,  and  their  glory. 

But  with  the  curled  lip  of  scorn  we  are  told  by  the  disunionists  that  in 
thus  supporting  a  Republican  administration  in  its  endeavors  to  uphold  the 
constitution  and  the  laws,  we  are  "submissionists,"  and  when  they  have 
pronounced  this  word,  they  suppose  they  have  im-puted  to  us  the  sum  of  all 
human  abasement.  Well,  let  it  be  confessed;  we  are  "submissionists,"  arid 
weak  and  spiritless  as  it  may  be  deemed  by  some,  we  glory  in  the  position 
we  occupy.  For  example:  the  law  says,  "Thou  shalt  not  steal;"  we  sub 
mit  to  this  law,  and  would  not  for  the  world's  worth  rob  our  neighbor  of  his 
forts,  his  arsenals,  his  arms,  his  munitions  of  war,  his  hospital  stores,  or  any 
thing  that  is  his.  Indeed,  so  impressed  are  we  with  the  obligations  of  this 
law,  that  we  would  no  more  think  of  plundering  from  our  neighbor  half  a 
million  of  dollars  because  found  in  his  unprotected  mints,  than  we  would 
think  of  filching  a  purse  from  his  pocket  in  a  crowded  thoroughfare.  Write 
us  down,  therefore,  "submissionists."  Again:  the  law  says,  "Thou  shalt 
not  swear  falsely ;"  we  submit  to  this  law,  and  while  in  the  civil  or  military 
service  of  the  country,  with  an  oath  to  support  the  constitution  of  the  United 
States  resting  upon  our  consciences,  we  would  not  for  any  earthly  considera 
tion  engage  in  the  formation  or  execution  of  a  conspiracy  to  subvert  that 
very  constitution,  and  with  it  the  government  to  which  it  has  given  birth. 
Write  us  down,  therefore,  again,  "submissionists."  Yet  again:  when  a 
President  has  been  elected  in  strict  accordance  with  the  form  and  spirit  of 
the  constitution,  and  has  been  regularly  installed  into  office,  and  is  honestly 
striving  to  discharge  his  duty  by  snatching  the  republic  from  the  jaws  of  a 
gigantic  treason  which  threatens  to  crush  it,  we  care  not  what  his  name  may 
or  may  not  be,  or  what  the  designation  of  his  political  party,  or  what  the 
platform  on  which  he  stood  during  the  presidential  canvass ;  we  believe  we 
fulfil  in  the  sight  of  earth  and  heaven  our  highest  obligations  to  our  country, 
in  giving  to  him  an  earnest  and  loyal  support  in  the  struggle  in  which  he  is 
engaged. 

Nor  are  we  at  all  disturbed  by  the  flippant  taunt  that  in  thus  submitting 
to  the  authority  of  our  government  we  are  necessarily  cowards.  We  know 
whence  this  taunt  comes,  and  we  estimate  it  at  its  true  value.  We  hold  that 
there  is  a  higher  courage  in  the  performance  of  duty  than  in  the  commission 
of  crime.  The  tiger  of  the  jungle  and  the  cannibal  of  the  South  Sea  Islands 
have  that  courage  in  which  the  revolutionists  of  the  day  make  their  especial 
boast;  the  angels  of  God  and  the  spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect  have  hadr 
and  have  that  courage  which  submits  to  the  laws.  Lucifer  was  a  non-sub- 
missionist,  and  the  first  secessionist  of  whom  history  has  given  us  any 


10  THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

account,  and  the  chains  which  he  wears  fitly,  express  the  fate  due  to  all  who 
openly  defy  the  laws  of  their  Creator  and  of  their  country.  He  rebelled  be 
cause  the  Almighty  would  not  yield  to  him  the  throne  of  heaven.  The 
principle  of  the  Southern  rebellion  is  the  same.  Indeed,  in  this  submission 
to  the  laws  is  found  the  chief  distinction  between  good  men  and  devils.  A 
good  man  obeys  the  laws  of  truth,  of  honesty,  of  morality,  and  all  those  laws 
which  have  been  enacted  by  competent  authority  for  the  government  and 
protection  of  the  country  in  which  he  lives  ;  a  devil  obeys  only  his  own  fero 
cious  and  profligate  passiens.  The  principle  on  which  this  rebellion  pro 
ceeds,  that  laws  have  in  themselves  no  sanctions,  no  binding  force  upon  the 
conscience,  and  that  every  man,  under  the  promptings  of  interest,  or  passion> 
or  caprice,  may,  at  will,  and  honorably  too,  strike  at  the  government  that 
shelters  him,  is  one  of  utter  demoralization,  and  should  be  trodden  out  as  you 
would  tread  on  a  spark  that  has  fallen  on  the  roof  of  your  dwelling.  Its  un 
checked  prevalence  would  resolve  society  into  chaos,  and  leave  you  without 
the  slightest  guarantee  for  life,  liberty,  or  property.  It  is  time  that,  in  their 
majesty,  the  people  of  the  United  States  should  make  known  to  the  world 
that  this  government,  in  its  dignity  and  power,  is  something  more  than  a 
moot  court,  and  that  the  citizen  who  makes  war  upon  it  is  a  traitor,  not  only 
in  theory  but  in  fact,  and  should  have  meted  out  to  him  a  traitor's  doom. 
The  country  wants  no  bloody  sacrifice,  but  it  must  and  will  have  peace,  cost 
what  it  may. 

Before  closing,  I  desire  to  say  a  few  words  on  the  relations  of  Kentucky  to 
the  pending  rebellion ;  and  as  we  are  all  Kentuckians  here  together  to-night, 
and  as  this  is  purely  a  family  matter,  which  concerns  the  honor  of  us  all,  I 
hope  we  may  be  permitted  to  speak  to  each  other  upon  it  with  entire  free 
dom.  I  shall  not  detain  you  with  observations  on  the  hostile  and  defiant 
position  assumed  by  the  governor  of  your  state.  In  his  reply  to  the  requi 
sition  made  upon  him  for  volunteers  under  the  proclamation  of  the  President, 
he  has,  in  my  judgment,  written  and  finished  his  own  history,  his  epitaph 
included,  and  it  is  probable  that  in  future  the  world  will  little  concern  itself 
as  to  what  his  excellency  may  propose  to  do,  or  as  to  what  he  may  propose 
not  to  do.  That  response  has  made  for  Kentucky  a  record  that  has  already 
brought  a  burning  blush  to  the  cheek  of  many  of  her  sons,  and  is  destined  to 
bring  it  to  the  cheek  of  many  more  in  the  years  which  are  to  come.  It  is  a 
shame,  indeed  a  crying  shame,  that  a  state  with  so  illustrious  a  past  should 
have  written  for  her,  by  her  own  chief  magistrate,  a  page  of  history  so  ut 
terly  humiliating  as  this.  But  your  legislature  have  determined  that  during 
the  present  unhappy  war  the  attitude  of  the  state  shall  be  that  of  strict  neu 
trality,  and  it  is  upon  this  determination  that  I  wish  respectfully  but  frankly 
to  comment.  As  the  motives  which  governed  the  legislature  were  doubt 
less  patriotic  and  conservative,  the  conclusion  arrived  at  cannot  be  con 
demned  as  dishonorable ;  still,  in  view  of  the  manifest  duty  of  the  state  and 


THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY.  11 

of  possible  results,  I  cannot  but  regard  it  as  mistaken  and  false,  and  one 
which  may  have  fatal  consequences.  Strictly  and  legally  speaking,  Ken 
tucky  must  go  out  of  the  Union  before  she  can  be  neutral.  Within  it  she  is 
necessarily  either  faithful  to  the  government  of  the  United  States,  or  she  is 
disloyal  to  it.  If  this  crutch  of  neutrality,  upon  which  her  well-meaning  but 
ill-judging  politicians  are  halting,  can  find  any  middle  ground  on  which  to 
rest,  it  has  escaped  my  researches,  though  I  have  diligently  sought  it.  Neu 
trality,  in  the  sense  of  those  who  now  use  the  term,  however  patriotically 
designed,  is,  in  effect,  but  a  snake  in  the  grass  of  rebellion,  and  those  who 
handle  it  will  sooner  or  later  feel  its  fangs.  Said  one  who  spake  as  never 
man  spake,  "He  who  is  not  with  us  is  against  us ;"  and  of  none  of  the  con 
flicts  which  have  arisen  between  men  or  between  nations,  could  this  be  more 
truthfully  said  than  of  that  in  which  we  are  now  involved.  Neutrality  nec 
essarily  implies  indifference.  Is  Kentucky  indifferent  to  the  issue  of  this 
contest?  Has  she,  indeed,  nothing  at  stake ?  Has  she  no  compact  with  her 
sister  states  to  keep,  no  plighted  faith  to  uphold,  no  renown  to  sustain,  no 
glory  to  win  ?  Has  she  no  horror  of  that  crime  of  crimes  now  being  com 
mitted  against  us  by  that  stupendous  rebellion  which  has  arisen  like  a  tem 
pest-cloud  in  the  South  ?  We  rejoice  to  know  that  she  is  still  a  member  of 
this  Union,  and  as  such  she  has  the  same  interest  in  resisting  this  rebellion 
that  each  limb  of  the  body  has  in  resisting  a  poignard  whose  point  is  aimed 
at  the  heart.  It  is  her  house  that  is  on  fire ;  has  she  no  interest  in  extin 
guishing  the  conflagration  ?  Will  she  stand  aloof  and  announce  herself  neu 
tral  between  the  raging  flames  and  the  brave  men  who  are  periling  their 

lives  to  subdue  them  ?     Hundreds  of  thousands  of  citizens  of  other  states 

men  of  culture  and  character,  of  thought  and  of  toil — men  who  have  a  deep 
stake  in  life,  and  an  intense  appreciation  of  its  duties  and  responsibilities, 
who  know  the  worth  of  this  blessed  government  of  ours,  and  do  not  prize 
even'  their  own  blood  above  it — I  say,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  such  men 
have  left  their  homes,  their  workshops,  their  offices,  their  counting-houses, 
and  their  fields,  and  are  now  rallying  about  our  flag,  freely  offering  their  all 
to  sustain  it,  and  since  the  days  that  crusading  Europe  threw  its  hosts  upon 
the  embattled  plains  of  Asia,  no  deeper,  or  more  earnest,  or  grander  spirit 
has  stirred  the  souls  of  men  than  that  which  now  sways  those  mighty  masses 
whose  gleaming  banners  are  destined  ere  long  to  make  bright  again  the 
earth  and  sky  of  the  distracted  South.  Can  Kentucky  look  upon  this  sub 
lime  spectacle  of  patriotism  unmoved,  and  then  say  to  herself:  "I  will  spend 
neither  blood  nor  treasure,  but  I  will  shrink  away  while  the  battle  rages,  and 
after  it  has  been  fought  and  won,  I  will  return  to  the  camp,  well  assured 
that  if  I  cannot  claim  the  laurels,  I  will  at  least  enjoy  the  blessings  of  the 
victory  ?"  Is  this  all  that  remains  of  her  chivalry — of  the  chivalry  of  the  land 
of  the  Shelbys,  the  Johnsons,  the  Aliens,  the  Clays,  the  Adairs,  and  the 
Davises  ?  Is  there  a  Kentuckian  within  the  sound  of  my  voice  to-night,  who 


12  THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY. 

can  hear  the  anguished  cry  of  his  country  as  she  wrestles  and  writhes  in  the 
olds  of  this  gigantic  treason,  and  then  lay  himself  down  upon  his  pillow  with 
this  thought  of  neutrality,  without  feeling  that  he  has  something  in  his 
bosom  which  stings  him  worse  than  would  an  adder  ?  Have  we,  within  the 
brief  period  of  eighty  years,  descended  so  far  from  the  mountain  heights  on 
which  our  fathers  stood,  that  already,  in  our  degeneracy,  we  proclaim  our 
blood  too  precious,  our  treasure  too  valuable  to  be  devoted  to  the  preserva 
tion  of  such  a  government  as  this?  They  fought  through  a  seven  years' 
war,  with  the  greatest  power  on  earth,  for  the  hope,  the  bare  hope,  of  being 
able  to  found  this  republic,  and  now  that  it  is  no  longer  a  hope  nor  an  ex 
periment,  but  a  glorious  reality,  which  has  excited  the  admiration  and  the 
homage  of  the  nations,  and  has  covered  us  with  blessings  as  "the  waters 
cover  the  channels  of  the  sea/'  have  we,  their  children,  no  years  of  toil,  of 
sacrifice,  and  of  battle  even,  if  need  be,  to  give,  to  save  it  from  absolute  de 
struction  at  the  hands  of  men  who,  steeped  in  guilt,  are  perpetrating  against 
us  and  humanity  a  crime,  for  which  I  verily  believe  the  blackest  page  of 
the  history  of  the  world's  darkest  period  furnishes  no  parallel?  Can  it 
be  possible  that  in  the  history  of  the  American  people  we  have  already 
reached  a  point  of  degeneracy  so  low,  that  the  work  of  WASHINGTON  and 
FRANKLIN,  of  ADAMS  and  JEFFERSON,  of  HANCOCK  and  HENRY,  is  to  be 
overthrown  by  the  morally  begrimed  and  pigmied  conspirators  who  are  now 
tugging  at  its  foundations  ?  It  would  be  the  overturning  of  the  Andes  by 
the  miserable  reptiles  that  are  crawling  in  the  sands  at  their  base. 

But  our  neutral  fellow-citizens  in  the  tenderness  of  their  hearts  say: 
"  This  effusion  of  blood  sickens  us."  Then  do  all  in  your  power  to  bring  it 
to  an  end.  Let  the  whole  strength  of  this  commonwealth  be  put  forth  in 
support  of  the  government,  in  order  that  the  war  may  be  terminated  by  a 
prompt  suppression  of  the  rebellion.  The  longer  the  struggle  continues,  the 
fiercer  will  be  its  spirit,  and  the  more  fearful  the  waste  of  life  attending  it. 
You  therefore  only  aggravate  the  calamity  you  deplore  by  standing  aloof 
from  the  combat.  But  again  they  say,  "  we  cannot  fight  our  brethren." 
Indeed.  But  your  brethren  can  fight  you,  and  with  a  good  will,  too.  Wick 
edly  and  wantonly  have  they  commenced  this  war  against  you  arid  your  in 
stitutions,  and  ferociously  are  they  prosecuting  it.  They  take  no  account  of 
the  fact  that  the  massacre  with  which  they  hope  their  swords  will,  ere  long, 
be  clogged,  must  be  the  massacre  of  their  brethren.  However  much  we 
may  bow  our  heads  at  the  confession,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  every  free 
people  that  have  existed  have  been  obliged,  at  one  period  or  other  of  their 
history,  to  fight  for  their  liberties  against  traitors  within  their  own  bosoms, 
and  that  people  who  have  not  the  greatness  of  soul  thus  to  fight,  cannot  long 
continue  to  be  free,  nor  do  they  deserve  to  be  so. 

There  is  not,  and  there  cannot  be,  any  neutral  ground  for  a  loyal  people 
between  their  own  government  and  those  who,  at  the  head  of  armies,  are 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  13 

menacing  its  destruction.  Your  inaction  is  not  neutrality,  though  you  may 
delude  yourselves  with  the  belief  that  it  is  so.  With  this  rebellion  confronting 
you,  when  you  refuse  to  co-operate  actively  with  your  government  in  subdu 
ing  it,  you  thereby  condemn  the  government,  and  assume  towards  it  an  atti 
tude  of  antagonism.  Your  inaction  is  a  virtual  indorsement  of  the  rebellion, 
and  if  you  do  not  thereby  give  to  the  rebels  precisely  that  "aid  and  comfort" 
spoken  of  in  the  constitution,  you  certainly  afford  them  a  most  powerful  en 
couragement  and  support.  That  they  regard  your  present  position  as  friendly 
to  them,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that,  in  a  recent  enactment  of  the  Confederate 
Congress  confiscating  the  debts  due  from  their  own  citizens  to  those  of  loyal 
states,  the  debts  due  to  the  people  of  Kentucky  are  expressly  excepted.  Is 
not  this  significant  ?  Does  it  leave  any  room  for  doubt  that  the  Confederate 
Congress  suppose  they  have  discovered,  under  the  guise  of  your  neutrality, 
a  lurking  sympathy  for  their  cause  which  entitles  you  to  be  treated  as  friends, 
if  not  as  active  allies  ?  Patriotic  as  was  the  purpose  of  her  apprehensive 
statesmen  in  placing  her  in  the  anomalous  position  she  now  occupies,  it  can 
not  be  denied  that  Kentucky  by  her  present  attitude  is  exerting  a  potent  in 
fluence  in  strengthening  the  rebellion,  and  is,  therefore,  false  alike  to  her 
loyalty  and  to  her  fame.  You  may  rest  well  assured  that  this  estimate  of 
your  neutrality  is  entertained  by  the  true  men  of  the  country  in  all  the  states 
which  are  now  sustaining  the  government.  Within  the  last  few  weeks  how 
many  of  those  gallant  volunteers  who  have  left  home  and  kindred  and  all 
that  is  dear  to  them,  and  are  now  under  a  Southern  sun,  exposing  them 
selves  to  death  from  disease  and  to  death  from  battle,  and  are  accounting 
their  lives  as  nothing  in  the  effort  they  are  making  for  the  deliverance  of 
your  government  and  theirs ;  how  many  of  them  have  said  to  me  in  sadness 
and  in  longing,  "Will  not  Kentucky  help  me ?"  How  my  soul  would  have 
leaped  could  I  have  answered  promptly,  confidently,  exultingly,  "  Yes,  she 
wiD."  But  when  I  thought  of  this  neutrality  my  heart  sank  within  me,  and 
I  did  not  and  I  could  not  look  those  brave  men  in  the  face.  And  yet  I  could 
not  answer,  "No."  I  could  not  crush  myself  to  the  earth  under  the  self- 
abasement  of  such  a  reply.  I  therefore  said — and  may  my  country  sustain 
me — "I  hope,  I  trust,  I  pray,  nay,  I  believe  Kentucky  will  yet  do  her  duty." 

If  this  government  is  to  be  destroyed,  ask  yourselves  are  you  willing  it 
shall  be  recorded  in  history  that  Kentucky  stood  by  in  the  greatness  of  her 
strength  and  lifted  not  a  hand  to  stay  the  catastrophe  ?  If  it  is  to  be  saved, 
as  I  verily  believe  it  is,  are  you  willing  it  shall  be  written  that,  in  the  immeas 
urable  glory  which  must  attend  the  achievement,  Kentucky  had  no  part  ? 

I  will  only  add,  if  Kentucky  wishes  the  waters  of  her  beautiful  Ohio  to  be 
dyed  in  blood — if  she  wishes  her  harvest  fields,  now  waving  in  their  abun 
dance,  to  be  trampled  beneath  the  feet  of  hostile  soldiery,  as  a  flower-garden 
is  trampled  beneath  the  threshings  of  the  tempest — if  she  wishes  the  homes 
where  her  loved  ones  are  now  gathered  in  peace,  invaded  by  the  prescriptive 


14  THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

fury  of  a  military  despotism,  sparing  neither  life  nor  property — if  she  wishes 
the  streets  of  her  towns  and  cities  grown  with  grass,  and  the  steamboats  of 
her  rivers  to  lie  rotting  at  her  wharves,  then  let  her  join  the  Southern  Con 
federacy  ;  but  if  she  would  hare  the  bright  waters  of  that  river  flow  on  in 
their  gladness — if  she  would  have  her  harvests  peacefully  gathered  to  her 
garners — if  she  would  have  the  lullabies  of  her  cradles  and  the  songs  of  her 
homes  uninvaded  by  the  cries  and  terrors  of  battle — if  she  would  have  the 
streets  of  her  towns  and  cities  again  filled  with  the  hum  and  throngs  of  busy 
trade,  and  her  rivers  and  her  shores  once  more  vocal  with  the  steamer's 
whistle,  that  anthem  of  a  free  and  prosperous  commerce,  then  let  her  stand 
fast  by  the  stars  and  stripes,  and  do  her  duty  and  her  whole  duty  as  a  mem 
ber  of  this  Union.  Let  her  brave  people  say  to  the  President  of  the  United 
States:  "You  are  our  chief  magistrate ;  the  government  you  have  in  charge, 
and  are  striving  to  save  from  dishonor  and  dismemberment,  is  our  govern 
ment  ;  your  cause  is  indeed  our  cause ;  your  battles  are  our  battles ;  make 
room  for  us,  therefore,  in  the  ranks  of  your  armies,  that  your  triumph  may 
be  our  triumph  also." 

Even  as  with  the  Father  of  us  all  I  would  plead  for  salvation,  so,  my 
countrymen,  as  upon  my  very  knees,  would  I  plead  with  you  for  the  life,  aye 
for  the  life,  of  our  great  and  beneficent  institutions.  But  if  the  traitor's  knife, 
now  at  the  throat  of  the  republic,  is  to  do  its  work,  and  this  government  is 
fated  to  add  yet  another  to  that  long  line  of  sepulchres  which  whiten  the 
highway  of  the  past,  then  my  heartfelt  prayer  to  God  is,  that  it  may  be  writ 
ten  in  history,  that  the  blood  of  its  life  was  not  found  upon  the  skirts  of 
Kentucky. 


LETTER  OF  HON.  JOSEPH  HOLT. 


WASHINGTON,  Friday,  May  31, 1861. 
J.  F.  SPEED,  Esq. 

My  Dear  Sir :  The  recent  overwhelming  vote  in  favor  of  the  Union 
in  Kentucky  has  afforded  unspeakable  gratification  to  all  true  men  throughout 
the  country.  That  vote  indicates  that  the  people  of  that  gallant  state  have 
been  neither  seduced  by  the  arts  nor  terrified  by  the  menaces  of  the  revolu 
tionists  in  their  midst,  and  that  it  is  their  fixed  purpose  to  remain  faithful  to 
a  government  which,  for  nearly  seventy  years,  has  remained  faithful  to 
them.  Still  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  in  the  bosom  of  that  state  a 
band  of  agitators,  who,  though  few  in  number,  are  yet  powerful  from  the 
public  confidence  they  have  enjoyed,  and  who  have  been,  and  doubtless  will 
continue  to  be,  unceasing  in  their  endeavor  to  force  Kentucky  to  unite  her 
fortunes  with  those  of  the  rebel  Confederacy  of  the  South.  In  view  of  this 
and  of  the  well-known  fact  that  several  of  the  seceded  states  have  by  fraud 
and  violence  been  driven  to  occupy  their  present  false  and  fatal  position,  I 
cannot,  even  with  the  encouragement  of  her  late  vote  before  me,  look  upon 
the  political  future  of  our  native  state  without  a  painful  solicitude.  Never 
have  the  safety  and  honor  of  her  people  required  the  exercise  of  so  much 
vigilance  and  of  so  much  courage  on  their  part.  If  true  to  themselves,  the 
stars  and  stripes,  which,  like  angel's  wings,  have  so  long  guarded  their 
homes  from  every  oppression,  will  still  be  theirs ;  but  if,  chasing  the  dreams 
of  men's  ambition,  they  shall  prove  false,  the  blackness  of  darkness  can  but 
faintly  predict  the  gloom  that  awaits  them.  The  legislature,  it  seems,  has 
determined  by  resolution  that  the  state,  pending  the  present  unhappy  warr 
shall  occupy  neutral  ground.  I  must  say,  in  all  frankness,  and  without  desiring 
to  reflect  upon  the  course  or  sentiments  of  any,  that,  in  this  struggle  for  the  exis 
tence  of  our  government,  I  can  neither  practise  nor  profess  nor  feel  neutrality- 
I  would  as  soon  think  of  being  neutral  in  a  contest  between  an  officer  of  justice 
and  an  incendiary  arrested  in  an  attempt  to  fire  the  dwelling  over  my  head ;  for 
the  government  whose  overthrow  is  sought,  is  for  me  the  shelter  not  only  of  home, 
kindred  and  friends,  but  of  every  earthly  blessing  which  I  can  hope  to  enjoy  on 


16  THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

this  side  of  the  grave.  If,  however,  from  a  natural  horror  of  fratricidal  strife, 
or  from  her  intimate  social  and  business  relations  with  the  South,  Kentucky 
shall  determine  to  maintain  the  neutral  attitude  assumed  for  her  by  her  leg 
islature,  her  position  will  still  be  an  honorable  one,  though  falling  far  short  of 
that  full  measure  of  loyalty  which  her  history  has  so  constantly  illustrated. 
Her  executive,  ignoring,  as  I  am  happy  to  believe,  alike  the  popular  and 
legislative  sentiment  of  the  state,  has,  by  proclamation,  forbidden  the  gov 
ernment  of  the  United  States  from  marching  troops  across  her  territory. 
This  is  in  no  sense  a  neutral  step,  but  one  of  aggressive  hostility.  The 
troops  of  the  Federal  Government  have  as  clear  a  constitutional  right  to  pass 
over  the  soil  of  Kentucky  as  they  have  to  march  along  the  streets  of  Wash 
ington  ;  and  could  this  prohibition  be  effective,  it  would  not  only  be  a  viola- 
latioii  of  the  fundamental  law.  but  would,  in  all  its  tendencies,  be  directly  in 
advancement  of  the  revolution,  and  might,  in  an  emergency  easily  imagined, 
compromise  the  highest  national  interests.  I  was  rejoiced  that  the  legisla 
ture  so  promptly  refused  to  endorse  this  proclamation  as  expressive  of  the 
true  policy  of  the  state.  But  I  turn  away  from  even  this  to  the  ballot-box, 
and  find  an  abounding  consolation  in  the  conviction  it  inspires,  that  the  pop 
ular  heart  of  Kentucky,  in  its  devotion  to  the  Union,  is  far  in  advance  alike 
of  legislative  resolve  and  executive  proclamation. 

But  as  it  is  well  understood  that  the  late  popular  demonstration  has  rather 
scotched  than  killed  rebellion  in  Kentucky,  I  propose  inquiring,  as  briefly 
as  practicable,  whether  in  the  recent  action  or  present  declared  policy  of 
the  administration,  or  in  the  history  of  the  ponding  revolution,  or  in  the 
objects  it  seeks  to  accomplish,  or  in  the  results  which  must  follow  from  it, 
if  successful,  there  can  be  discovered  any  reasons  why  that  state  should 
sever  the  ties  that  unite  her  with  a  Confederacy  in  whose  councils  and  upon 
whose  battle-fields  she  has  won  so  much  fame,  and  under  whose  protection 
she  has  enjoyed  so  much  prosperity. 

For  more  than  a  month  after  the  inauguration  of  President  LINCOLN,  the 
manifestations  seemed  unequivocal  that  his  administration  would  seek  a 
peaceful  solution  of  our  unhappy  political  troubles,  and  would  look  to  time 
and  amendments  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  adopted  in  accordance  with  its 
provisions,  to  bring  back  the  revolted  states  to  their  allegiance.  So  marked 
was  the  effect  of  these  manifestations  in  tranquilizing  the  border  states  and 
in  reassuring  their  loyalty,  that  the  conspirators  who  had  set  this  revolution 
on  foot  took  the  alarm.  While  affecting  to  despise  these  states  as  not  sufficiently 
intensified  in  their  devotion  to  African  servitude,  they  knew  they  could  never 
succeed  in  their  treasonable  enterprise  without  their  support.  Hence  it  was 
resolved  to  precipitate  a  collision  uf  arms  with  the  federal  authorities,  in  the 
hope  that  under  the  panic  and  exasperation  incident  to  the  commencement  of 
a  civil  war,  the  border  states,  following  the  natural  bent  of  their  sympathies, 
would  array  themselves  against  the  government.  Fort  Sumter,  occupied  by  a 


THE    FALLACY    OF   NEUTRALITY.  17 

feeble  garrison,  and  girdled  by  powerful  if  not  impregnable  batteries,  afforded 
convenient  means  for  accomplishing  their  purpose,  and  for  testing  also  their 
theory,  that  blood  was  needed  to  cement  the  new  Confederacy.  Its  provis 
ions  were  exhausted,  and  the  request  made  by  the  President,  in  the  interests 
of  peace  and  humanity,  for  the  privilege  of  replenishing  its  stores,  had  been 
refused.  The  Confederate  authorities  were  aware — for  so  the  gallant  comman 
der  of  the  fort  had  declared  to  them — that  in  two  days  a  capitulation  from 
starvation  must  take  place.  A  peaceful  surrender,  however,  would  not  have 
subserved  their  aims.  They  sought  the  clash  of  arms  and  the  effusion  of 
blood  as  an  instrumentality  for  impressing  the  border  states,  and  they 
sought  the  humiliation  of  the  government  and  the  dishonor  of  its  flag  as  a 
means  of  giving  prestige  to  their  own  cause.  The  result  is  known.  With 
out  the  slightest  provocation,  a  heavy  cannonade  was  opened  upon  the  fort, 
and  borne  by  its  helpless  garrison  for  hours  without  reply ;  and  when,  in 
the  progress  of  the  bombardment,  the  fortification  became  wrapped  in  flames, 
the  besieging  batteries,  in  violation  of  the  usages  of  civilized  warfare,  in 
stead  of  relaxing  or  suspending,  redoubled  their  fires.  A  more  wanton  or 
wicked  war  was  never  commenced  on  any  government  whose  history  has  been 
written.  Contemporary  with  and  following  the  fall  of  Sumter,  the  siege  of 
Fort  Pickens  was  and  still  is  actively  pressed ;  the  property  of  the  United 
States  government  continued  to  be  seized  wherever  found,  and  its  troops,  by 
fraud  or  force,  captured  in  the  state  of  Texas,  in  violation  of  a  solemn  com 
pact  with  its  authorities  that  they  should  be  permitted  to  embark  without 
molestation.  This  was  the  requital  which  the  Lone  Star  State  made  to 
brave  men,  who,  through  long  years  of  peril  and  privation,  had  guarded  its 
frontiers  against  the  incursions  of  the  savages.  In  the  midst  of  the  most 
active  and  extended  warlike  preparations  in  the  South,  the  announcement 
was  made  by  the  Secretary  of  War  of  the  seceded  states,  and  echoed  with 
taunts  and  insolent  bravadoes  by  the  Southern  press,  that  Washington  City 
was  to  be  invaded  and  captured,  and  that  the  flag  of  the  Confederate  States 
would  soon  float  over  the  dome  of  its  Capitol.  Soon  thereafter  there  followed 
an  invitation  to  all  the  world — embracing  necessarily  the  outcasts  and  despe 
radoes  of  every  sea — to  accept  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal,  to  prey  upon 
the  rich  and  unprotected  commerce  of  the  United  States. 

In  view  of  these  events  and  threatenings,  what  was  the  duty  of  the  chief 
magistrate  of  the  republic  ?  He  might  have  taken  counsel  of  the  revolution 
ists  and  trembled  under  their  menaces ;  he  might,  upon  the  fall  of  Sumter, 
have  directed  that  Fort  Pickens  should  be  surrendered  without  firing  a  gun 
in  its  defence,  and  proceeding  yet  further,  and  meeting  fully  the  requirements 
of  the  "  let  us  alone"  policy  insisted  on  in  the  South,  he  might  have  ordered 
that  the  stars  and  stripes  should  be  laid  in  the  dust  in  the  presence  of  every  bit 
of  rebel  bunting  that  might  appear.  Bat  he  did  none  of  these  things,  nor  could 
he  have  done  them  without  forfeiting  his  oath  and  betraying  the  most  sublime  trust 
2 


18  THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

that  has  ever  been  confided  to  the  hands  of  man.  With  a  heroic  fidelity  to  his  con 
stitutional  obligations,  feeling  justly  that  these  obligations  charged  him  with  the 
protection  of  the  republic  and  its  capital  against  the  assaults  alike  of  foreign  and 
domestic  enemies,  he  threw  himself  on  the  loyalty  of  the  country  for  support 
in  the  struggle  upon  which  he  was  about  to  enter,  and  nobly  has  that  appeal 
been  responded  to.  States  containing  an  aggregate  population  of  nineteen 
millions  have  answered  to  the  appeal  as  with  the  voice  of  one  man,  offering 
soldiers  without  number,  and  treasure  without  limitation  for  the  service  of  the 
government.  In  these  states,  fifteen  hundred  thousand  freemen  cast  their 
votes  in  favor  of  candidates  supporting  the  rights  of  the  South,  at  the  last 
presidential  election,  and  yet  everywhere,  alike  in  popular  assemblies  and 
upon  the  tented  field,  this  million  and  a  half  of  voters  are  found  yielding  to 
none  in  the  zeal  with  which  they  rally  to  their  country's  flag.  They  are  not 
less  the  friends  of  the  South  than  before ;  but  they  realize  that  the  question 
now  presented  is  not  one  of  administrative  policy,  or  of  the  claims  of  the 
North,  the  South,  the  East,  or  the  "West ;  but  is,  simply,  whether  nineteen 
millions  of  people  shall  tamely  and  ignobly  permit  five  or  six  millions  to 
overthrow  and  destroy  institutions  which  are  the  common  property,  and 
have  been  the  common  blessings  and  glory  of  all.  The  great  thoroughfares 
of  the  North,  the  East,  and  the  West,  are  luminous  with  the  banners  and  glis 
tening  with  the  bayonets  of  citizen  soldiers  marching  to  the  capital,  or  to  the 
other  points  of  rendezvous ;  but  they  come  in  no  hostile  spirit  to  the  South. 
If  called  to  press  her  soil,  they  will  not  ruffle  a  flower  of  her  gardens,  nor  a  blade 
of  grass  of  her  fields  in  unkindness.  No  excesses  will  mark  the  footsteps  of  the 
armies  of  the  republic ;  no  institution  of  the  states  will  be  invaded  or  tampered 
with,  no  rights  of  persons  or  of  property  will  be  violated.  The  known  purposes 
of  the  administration,  and  the  high  character  of  the  troops  employed,  alike  guar 
antee  the  truthfulness  of  this  statement.  When  an  insurrection  was  apprehended 
a  few  weeks  since  in  Maryland,  the  Massachusetts  regiment  at  once  offered 
their  services  to  suppress  it.  These  volunteers  have  been  denounced  by  the 
press  of  the  South  as  "knaves  and  vagrants,"  "the  dregs  and  offscourings  of 
the  populace,"  who  would  "  rather  filch  a  handkerchief  than  fight  an  enemy  in 
manly  combat ;"  yet  we  know  here  that  their  discipline  and  bearing  are  most 
admirable,  and,  I  presume,  it  may  be  safely  affirmed,  that  a  larger  amount  of 
social  position,  culture,  fortune,  and  elevation  of  character,  has  never  been 
found  in  so  large  an  army  in  any  age  or  country.  //  they  go  to  the  Soiith,  it 
will  be  as  friends  and  protectors,  to  relieve  the  Union  sentiment  of  the  seceded 
states  from  the  cruel  domination  by  which  it  is  oppressed  and  silenced,  to  unfurl 
the  stars  and  stripes  in  the  midst  of  those  who  long  to  look  upon  them,  and  to 
restore  the  flag  that  bears  them  to  the  forts  and  arsenals  from  which  disloyal 
hands  have  torn  it.  Their  mission  will  be  one  of  peace,  unless  wicked  and  blood 
thirsty  men  shall  unsheath  the  sword  across  their  pathway. 

It  is  in  vain  for  the  revolutionists  to  exclaim  that  this  is  "subjugation."     It  it 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  19 

so,  precisely  in  the  sense  in  which  you  and  I  and  all  law-abiding  citizens  are 
subjugated.  The  people  of  the  South  are  our  brethren,  and  while  we  obey 
the  laws  enacted  by  our  joint  authority,  and  keep  a  compact  to  which  we  all 
are  parties,  we  only  ask  that  they  shall  be  required  to  do  the  same.  We  be 
lieve  that  their  safety  demands  this ;  we  know  that  ours  does.  We  impose 
no  burden  which  we  ourselves  do  not  bear ;  we  claim  no  privilege  or  bless 
ing  which  our  brethren  of  the  South  shall  not  equally  share.  Their  country 
is  our  country,  and  ours  is  theirs ;  and  that  unity  both  of  country  and  of  gov 
ernment  which  the  providence  of  God  and  the  compacts  of  men  have  created, 
we  could  not  ourselves,  without  self-immolation,  destroy,  nor  can  we  permit 
it  to  be  destroyed  by  others. 

Equally  vain  is  it  for  them  to  declare  that  they  only  wish  "  to  be  let  alone," 
and  that,  in  establishing  the  independence  of  the  seceded  states,  they  do 
those  which  remain  in  the  old  confederacy  no  harm.  The  free  states,  if  al 
lowed  the  opportunity  of  doing  so,  will  undoubtedly  concede  every  guarantee 
needed  to  afford  complete  protection  to  the  institutions  of  the  South,  and  to 
furnish  assurances  of  her  perfect  equality  in  the  Union;  but  all  such  guaran 
tees  and  assurances  are  now  openly  spurned,  and  the  only  Southern  right 
now  insisted  on  is  that  of  dismembering  the  republic.  It  is  perfectly  certain, 
that  in  the  attempted  exercise  of  this  right,  neither  states  nor  statesmen  will 
be  "let  alone."  Should  a  ruffian  meet  me  in  the  streets,  and  seek,  with  his 
axe,  to  hew  an  arm  and  a  leg  from  my  body,  I  would  not  the  less  resist  him 
because,  as  a  dishonored  and  helpless  trunk,  I  might  perchance  survive  the 
mutilation.  It  is  easy  to  perceive  what  fatal  results  to  the  old  confederacy 
would  follow,  should  the  blow  now  struck  at  its  integrity  ultimately  triumph. 
We  can  well  understand  what  degradation  it  would  bring  to  it  abroad,  and 
what  weakness  at  home ;  what  exhaustion  from  incessant  war  and  standing 
armies,  and  from  the  erection  of  fortifications  along  the  thousands  of  miles  of 
new  frontiers ;  what  embarrassments  to  commerce  from  having  its  natural 
channels  encumbered  or  cut  off;  what  elements  of  disintegration  and  revolu 
tion  would  be  introduced  from  the  pernicious  example ;  and,  above  all,  what 
humiliation  would  cover  the  whole  American  people  for  having  failed  in  their 
great  mission  to  demonstrate  before  the  world  the  capacity  of  our  race  for 
self-government. 

While  a  far  more  fearful  responsibility  has  fatten  upon  President  Lincoln 
than  upon  any  of  his  predecessors,  it  must  be  admitted  that  he  has  met  it  with 
p?omptitude  and  fearlessness.  CICERO,  in  one  of  his  orations  against  CATI 
LINE,  speaking  of  the  credit  due  himself  for  having  suppressed  the  conspir 
acy  of  that  arch-traitor,  said,  "  If  the  glory  of  him  who  founded  Rome  was 
great,  how  much  greater  should  be  that  of  him  who  had  saved  it  from  over 
throw,  after  it  had  grown  to  be  mistress  of  the  world  !"  So  may  it  be  said 
of  the  glory  of  that  statesman  or  chieftain  who  shall  snatch  this  republic 
from  the  vortex  of  revolution,  now  that  it  has  expanded  from  ocean  to 


20  THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

ocean — has  become  the  admiration  of  the  world,  and  has  rendered  the 
fountains  of  the  lives  of  thirty  millions  of  people  fountains  of  happiness. 

The  vigorous  measures  adopted  for  the  safety  of  Washington,  and  the 
government  itself,  may  seem  open  to  criticism,  in  some  of  their  details,  to 
those  who  have  yet  to  learn  that  not  only  has  war,  like  peace,  its  laws,  but 
that  it  has  also  its  privileges  and  its  duties.  Whatever  of  severity,  or  even 
of  irregularity,  may  have  arisen,  will  find  its  justification  in  the  pressure  of 
the  terrible  necessity  under  which  the  administration  has  been  called  to  act. 
When  a  man  feels  the  poignard  of  the  destroyer  at  his  bosom,  he  is  not 
likely  to  consult  the  law  books  as  to  the  mode  or  measure  of  his  rights  of 
self-defence.  What  is  true  of  individuals  is,  in  this  respect,  equally  true  of 
governments.  The  man  who  thinks  he  has  become  disloyal  because  of  what  the 
administration  has  done,  will  probably  discover,  after  a  close  examination,  that 
he  was  disloyal  before.  But  for  what  has  been  done,  Washington  might  ere 
this  have  been  a  smouldering  heap  of  ruins. 

They  have  noted  the  course  of  public  affairs  to  little  advantage  who  sup 
pose  that  the  election  of  LINCOLN  was  the  real  ground  of  the  revolutionary 
outbreak  that  has  occurred.  The  roots  of  the  revolution  may  be  traced  back 
for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  an  unholy  lust  for  power  is  the 
soil  out  of  which  it  sprang.  A  prominent  member  of  the  band  of  agitators 
declared  in  one  of  his  speeches  at  Charleston,  last  November  or  December, 
that  they  had  been  occupied  for  thirty  years  in  the  work  of  severing  South 
Carolina  from  the  Union.  When  General  JACKSON  crushed  nullification,  he 
said  it  would  revive  again  under  the  form  of  the  slavery  agitation,  and  we 
have  lived  to  see  his  prediction  verified.  Indeed,  that  agitation,  during  the 
last  fifteen  or  twenty  years,  has  been  almost  the  entire  stock-in-trade  of 
Southern  politicians.  The  Southern  people,  known  to  be  as  generous  in 
their  impulses  as  they  are  chivalric,  were  not  wrought  into  a  frenzy  of  pas 
sion  by  the  intemperate  words  of  a  few  fanatical  abolitionists ;  for  these 
words,  if  left  to  themselves,  would  have  fallen  to  the  ground  as  pebbles  into 
the  sea,  and  would  have  been  heard  of  no  more.  But  it  was  the  echo  of 
those  words,  repeated  with  exaggerations  for  the  thousandth  time  by  South 
ern  politicians,  in  the  halls  of  Congress,  and  in  the  deliberative  and  popular 
assemblies,  and  through  the  press  of  the  South,  that  produced  the  exasper 
ation  which  has  proved  so  potent  a  lever  in  the  hands  of  the  conspirators. 
The  cloud  was  fully  charged,  and  the  juggling  revolutionists  who  held  the 
wires,  and  could  at  will  direct  its  lightnings,  appeared  at  Charleston,  broke 
up  the  Democratic  convention  assembled  to  nominate  a  candidate  for  the 
presidency,  and  thus  secured  the  election  of  Mr.  LINCOLN.  Having  thus  ren 
dered  this  certain,  they  at  once  set  to  work  to  bring  the  popular  mind  of  the 
South  to  the  point  of  determining  in  advance  that  the  election  of  a  Republican 
president  would  be,  per  se,  cause  for  a  dissolution  of  the  Union.  They  were 
but  too  successful,  and  to  this  result  the  inaction  and  indecision  of  the  bor- 


THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY.  21 

der  states  deplorably  contributed.  "When  the  election  of  Mr.  LINCOLN  was 
announced,  there  was  rejoicing  in  the  streets  of  Charleston,  and  doubtless  at 
other  points  in  the  South ;  for  it  was  believed  by  the  conspirators  that  this 
had  brought  a  tide  in  the  current  of  their  machinations  which  would  bear 
them  on  to  victory.  The  drama  of  secession  was  now  open,  and  state  after 
state  rapidly  rushed  out  of  the  Union,  and  their  members  withdrew  from 
Congress.  The  revolution  was  pressed  on  with  this  hot  haste  in  order  that 
no  time  should  be  allowed  for  reaction  in  the  Northern  mind,  or  for  any  ad 
justment  of  the  slavery  issues  by  the  action  of  Congress  or  of  the  state  legis 
latures.  Had  the  Southern  members  continued  in  their  seats,  a  satisfactory 
compromise  would,  no  doubt,  have  been  arranged  and  passed  before  the  ad 
journment  of  Congress.  As  it  was,  after  their  retirement,  and  after  Con 
gress  had  become  republican,  an  amendment  to  the  constitution  was  adopted 
by  a  two-thirds  vote,  declaring  that  Congress  should  never  interfere  with 
slavery  in  the  states,  and  declaring,  further,  that  this  amendment  should  be 
irrevocable.  Thus  we  falsified  the  clamor  so  long  and  so  insidiously  rung  in 
the  ears  of  the  Southern  people,  that  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  states 
was  the  ultimate  aim  of  the  Republican  party.  But  even  this  amendment, 
and  all  others  which  may  be  needed  to  furnish  the  guarantees  demanded, 
are  now  defeated  by  the  secession  of  eleven  states,  which,  claiming  to  be  out 
of  the  Union,  will  refuse  to  vote  upon,  and,  in  effect,  will  vote  against,  any 
proposals  to  modify  the  federal  constitution.  There  are  now  thirty-four 
states  in  the  confederacy,  three-fourths  of  which,  being  twenty-six,  must  con 
cur  in  the  adoption  of  any  amendment  before  it  can  become  a  part  of  the 
constitution;  but  the  secession  of  eleven  states  leaves  but  twenty-three 
whose  vote  can  possibly  be  secured,  which  is  less  than  the  constitutional 
number. 

Thus  we  have  the  extraordinary  and;  discreditable  spectacle  of  a  revolution 
made  by  certain  states,  professedly  on  the  ground  that  guarantees  for  the 
safety  of  their  institutions  are  denied  them,  and,  at  the  same  time,  instead  of 
co-operating  with  their  sister  states  in  obtaining  these  guarantees,  they  de 
signedly  assume  a  hostile  attitude,  and  thereby  render  it  constitutionally  im 
possible  to  secure  them.  This  profound  dissimulation  shows  that  it  was  not 
the  safety  of  the  South,  but  its  severance  from  the  confederacy,  which  was 
sought  from  the  beginning.  Cotemporary  with,  and  in  some  cases  preced 
ing,  these  acts  of  secession,  the  greatest  outrages  were  committed  upon  the 
government  of  the  United  States  by  the  states  engaged  in  them.  Its  forts, 
arsenals,  arms,  barracks,  custom-houses,  post-offices,  moneys,  and,  indeed, 
every  species  of  its  property  within  the  limits  of  these  states,  were  seized 
and  appropriated,  down  to  the  very  hospital  stores  for  the  sick  soldiers. 
More  than  half  a  million  of  dollars  was  plundered  from  the  mint  at  New 
Orleans.  United  States  vessels  were  received  from  the  defiled  hands  of 
their  officers  in  command,  and,  as  If  in  the  hope  of  consecrating  official 


22  THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

treachery  as  one  of  the  public  virtues  of  the  age,  the  surrender  of  an  entire 
military  department  by  a  general,  to  the  keeping  of  whose  honor  it  had  been 
confided,  was  deemed  worthy  of  the  commendation  and  thanks  of  the  conven 
tions  of  several  states.  All  these  lawless  proceedings  were  well  understood 
to  have  been  prompted  and  directed  by  men  occupying  seats  in  the  capitol, 
some  of  whom  were  frank  enough  to  declare  that  they  could  not  and  would 
not,  though  in  a  minority,  live  under  a  government  which  they  could  not 
control.  In  this  declaration  is  found  the  key  which  unlocks  the  whole  of 
the  complicated  machinery  of  this  revolution.  The  profligate  ambition  of 
public  men  in  all  ages  and  lands  has  been  the  rock  on  which  republics  have 
been  split.  Such  men  have  arisen  in  our  midst — men  who,  because  unable 
permanently  to  grasp  the  helm  of  the  ship,  are  willing  to  destroy  it  in  the 
hope  to  command  some  one  of  the  rafts  that  may  float  away  from  the  wreck. 
The  effect  is  to  degrade  us  to  a  level  with  the  military  bandits  of  Mexico  and 
South  America,  who,  when  beaten  at  an  election,  fly  to  arms,  and  seek  to 
master  by  the  sword  what  they  have  been  unable  to  control  by  the  ballot- 
box. 

The  atrocious  acts  enumerated  were  acts  of  war,  and  might  all  have  been 
treated  as  such  by  the  late  administration ;  but  the  President  patriotically 
cultivated  peace — how  anxiously  and  how  patiently  the  country  well  knows. 
Wfiile,  however,  the  revolutionary  leaders  greeted  him  with  all  hails  to  his  face, 
they  did  not  the  less  diligently  continue  to  whet  their  swords  behind  his  back. 
Immense  military  preparations  were  made,  so  that  when  the  moment  for  striking 
at  the  government  of  the  United  States  arrived,  the  revolutionary  states  leaped 
into  the  contest  clad  in  full  armor. 

As  if  nothing  should  be  wanting  to  darken  this  page  of  history,  the  seceded 
States  have  already  entered  upon  the  work  of  confiscating  the  debts  due  from 
their  citizens  to  the  North  and  North-west.  The  millions  thus  gained  will 
doubtless  prove  a  pleasant  substitute  for  those  guarantees  now  so  scornfully 
rejected.  To  these  confiscations  will  probably  succeed  soon  those  of  lands 
and  negroes  owned  by  citizens  of  loyal  states;  and,  indeed,  the  apprehen 
sion  of  this  step  is  already  sadly  disturbing  the  fidelity  of  non-resident  pro 
prietors.  Fortunately,  however,  infirmity  of  faith,  springing  from  such  a 
cause,  is  not  likely  to  be  contagious.  The  war  begun  is  being  prosecuted  by  the 
Confederate  States  in  a  temper  as  fierce  and  unsparing  as  that  which  character 
izes  conflicts  between  the  most  hostile  nations.  Letters  of  marque  and  reprisals 
are  being  granted  to  all  who  seek  them,  so  that  our  coasts  will  soon  swarm 
with  these  piratical  cruisers,  as  the  President  has  properly  denounced  them. 
Every  buccaneer  who  desires  to  rob  American  commerce  upon  the  ocean, 
can,  for  the  asking,  obtain  a  warrant  to  do  so,  in  the  name  of  the  new  repub 
lic.  To  crown  all,  large  bodies  of  Indians  have  been  mustered  into  the  ser 
vice  of  the  revolutionary  states,  and  are  now  conspicuous  in  the  ranks  of  the 
Southern  army.  A  leading  North  Carolina  journal,  noting  their  stalwart 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  23 

frames  and  unerring  markmanship,  'observes,  with  an  exultation  positively 
fiendish,  that  they  are  armed,  not  only  with  the  rifle,  but  also  with  the  scalp- 
ing-knife  and  tomahawk. 

Is  Kentucky  willing  to  link  her  name  in  history  with  the  excesses  and 
crimes  which  have  sullied  this  revolution  at  every  step  of  its  progress?  Can 
she  soil  her  pure  hands  with  its  booty  ?  She  possesses  the  noblest  heritage 
that  God  has  granted  to  his  children ;  is  she  prepared  to  barter  it  away  for 
that  miserable  mess  of  pottage  which  the  gratification  of  the  unholy  ambition 
of  her  public  men  would  bring  to  her  lips  ?  Can  she,  without  laying  her  face 
in  the  very  dust  for  shame,  become  a  participant  in  the  spoliation  of  the 
commerce  of  her  neighbors  and  friends,  by  contributing  her  star,  hitherto  so 
stainless  in  its  glory,  to  light  the  corsair  on  his  way  ?  Has  the  warwhoop 
which  used  to  startle  the  sleep  of  our  frontiers,  so  died  away  in  her  ears  that 
she  is  willing  to  take  the  red-handed  savage  to  her  bosom  as  the  champion  of 
her  rights  and  the  representative  of  her  spirit  ?  Must  she  not  first  forget  her 
own  heroic  sons,  who  perished,  butchered  and  scalped,  upon  the  disastrous 
field  of  Raisin? 

The  object  of  the  revolution,  as  avowed  by  all  who  are  pressing  it  forward 
is  the  permanent  dismemberment  of  the  Confederacy.  The  dream  of  recon 
struction — used  during  the  last  winter  as  a  lure  to  draw  the  hesitating  or  the 
hopeful  into  the  movement — has  been  formally  abandoned.  If  Kentucky 
separates  herself  from  the  Union,  it  must  be  upon  the  basis  that  the  separ 
ation  is  to  be  final  and  eternal.  Is  there  aught  in  the  organization  or  admin 
istration  of  the  government  of  the  United  States  to  justify,  on  her  part,  an 
act  so  solemn  and  so  perilous  ?  Could  the  wisest  of  her  lawyers,  if  called 
upon,  find  material  for  an  indictment  in  any  or  in  all  the  pages  of  the  history 
of  the  republic  ?  Could  the  most  leprous-lipped  of  its  calumniators  point  to 
a  single  state  or  territory,  or  community  or  citizen,  that  it  has  wronged  or  op 
pressed  ?  It  would  be  impossible.  So  far  as  the  slave  states  are  concerned, 
their  protection  has  been  complete,  and  if  it  has  not  been,  it  has  been  the  fault  of 
their  statesmen,  who  have  had  the  control  of  the  government  since  its  founda 
tion. 

The  census  returns  show  that  during  the  year  1860,  the  fugitive  slave  law 
was  executed  more  faithfully  and  successfully  than  it  had  been  during  the 
preceding  ten  years.  Since  the  installation  of  President  Lincoln,  not  a  case 
has  arisen  in  which  the  fugitive  has  not  been  returned,  and  that,  too,  without 
any  opposition  from  the  people.  Indeed,  the  fidelity  with  which  it  was  un 
derstood  to  be  the  policy  of  the  administration  to  enforce  the  provisions  of 
this  law,  has  caused  a  perfect  panic  among  the  runaway  slaves  in  the  free 
states,  and  they  have  been  escaping  in  multitudes  to  Canada,  unpursued  and 
unreclaimed  by  their  masters.  Is  there  found  in  this,  reason  for  a  dissolu 
tion  of  the  Union  ? 

That  the  slave  states  are  not  recognized  as  equals  in  the  Confederacy,  has 


24  THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY. 

for  several  years  been  the  cry  of  demagogues  and  conspirators.     But  what  is 
the  truth  ?    Not  only  according  to  the  theory,  but  the  actual  practice  of  the 
government,  the  slave  states  have  ever  been,  and  still  are,  in  all  respects, 
the  peers  of  the  free.     Of  the  fourteen  presidents  who  have  been  elected' 
seven  were  citizens  of  slave  states,  and  of  the  seven  remaining,  three  repre 
sented  Southern  principles,  and  received  the  votes  of  the  Southern  people ;  so 
that,  in  our  whole  history,  but  four  presidents  have  been  chosen  who  can  be 
claimed  as  the  special  champions  of  the  policy  and  principles  of  the  free 
states,  and  even  these  so  only  in  a  modified  sense.     Does  this  look  as  if  the 
South  had  ever  been  deprived  of  her  equal  share  of  the  honors  and  powers  of 
the  government?     The  Supreme  Court  has  decided  that  the  citizens  of  the 
slave  states  can,  at  will,  take  their  slaves  into  all  the  territories  of  the  United 
States ;  and  this  decision,  which  has  never  been  resisted  or  interfered  with 
in  a  single  case,  is  the  law  of  the  land,  and  the  whole  power  of  the  govern 
ment  is  pledged  to  enforce  it.     That  it  will  be  loyally  enforced  by  the  present 
administration,  I  entertain  no  doubt.     A  Republican  Congress,  at  the  late 
session,  organized  three  new  territories,  and  in  the  organic  law  of  neither  was 
there  introduced  or  attempted  to  be  introduced,  the  slightest  restriction  upon 
the  rights  of  the  Southern  emigrant  to  bring  his  slaves  with  him.     At  this 
moment,  therefore,  and  I  state  it  without  qualification,  there  is  not  a  terri 
tory  belonging  to  the  United  States  into  which  the  Southern  people  may  not 
introduce  their  slaves  at  pleasure,  and  enjoy  their  complete  protection.     Ken 
tucky  should  consider  this  great  and  undeniable  fact,  before  which  all  the 
frothy  rant  of  demagogues  and  disunionists  must  disappear  as  a  bank  of  fog 
before  the  wind.     But  were  it  otherwise,  and  did  a  defect  exist  in  our  organic 
law,  or  in  the  practical  administration  of  the  government,  in  reference  to  the 
rights  of  Southern  slaveholders  in  the  territories,  still  the  question  would  be  a 
mere  abstraction,  since  the  laws  of  climate  forbid  the  establishment  of  slavery 
in  such  a  latitude ;  and  to  destroy  such  institutions  as  ours  for  such  a  cause, 
instead  of  patiently  trying  to  remove  it,  would  be  little  short  of  national  in 
sanity.     It  would  be  to  burn  the  house  down  over  our  heads  merely  because 
there  is  a  leak  in  the  roof;  to  scuttle  the  ship  in  mid-ocean  merely  because 
there  is  a  difference  of  opinion  among  the  crew  as  to  the  point  of  the  compass 
to  which  the  vessel  should  be  steered ;  it  would  be,  in  fact,  to  apply  the  knife 
to  the  throat  instead  of  to  the  cancer  of  the  patient. 

But  what  remains  ?  Though,  say  the  disunionists,  the  Fugitive  Slave  law 
is  honestly  enforced,  and  though,  under  the  shelter  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
we  can  take  our  slaves  into  the  territories,  the  Northern  people  will  persist 
in  discussing  the  institution  of  slavery,  and  therefore  we  will  break  up  the 
government.  It  is  true  that  slavery  has  been  very  intemperately  discussed 
in  the  North,  and  it  is  equally  true  that  until  we  have  an  Asiatic  despotism, 
crushing  out  all  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press,  this  discussion  will  prob 
ably  continue.  In  this  age  and  country  all  institutions,  human  and  divine, 


THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY.  25 

are  discussed,  and  so  they  ought  to  be ;  and  all  that  cannot  bear  discussion 
must  go  to  the  wall,  where  they  ought  to  go.  It  is  not  pretended,  however, 
that  the  discussion  of  slavery,  which  has  been  continued  in  our  country  for 
more  than  forty  years,  has  in  any  manner  disturbed  or  weakened  the  founda 
tion  of  the  institution.  On  the  contrary,  we  learn  from  the  press  of  the  se 
ceded  states  that  their  slaves  were  never  more  tranquil  or  obedient.  There 
are  zealots — happily  few  in  number — both  North  and  South,  whose  language 
upon  this  question  is  alike  extravagant  and  alike  deserving  our  condemna 
tion.  Those  who  assert  that  slavery  should  be  extirpated  by  the  sword,  and 
those  who  maintain  that  the  great  mission  of  the  white  man  upon  earth  is  to 
enslave  the  black,  are  not  far  apart  in  the  folly  and  atrocity  of  their  senti 
ments. 

Before  proceeding  further,  Kentucky  should  measure  well  the  depth  of  the 
gulf  she  is  approaching,  and  look  well  to  the  feet  of  her  guides.  Before  for 
saking  a  Union  in  which  her  people  have  enjoyed  such  uninterrupted  and 
such  boundless  prosperity,  she  should  ask  herself,  not  once,  but  many  times, 
why  do  I  go,  and  where  am  I  going?  In  view  of  what  has  been  said,  it 
would  be  difficult  to  answer  the  first  branch  of  the  inquiry,  but  to  answer  the 
second  part  is  patent  to  all,  as  are  the  consequences  which  would  follow  the 
movement.  In  giving  her  great  material  and  moral  resources  to  the  support 
of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  Kentucky  might  prolong  the  desolating  struggle 
that  rebellious  states  are  making  to  overthrow  a  government  which  they  have 
only  known  in  its  blessings;  but  the  triumph  of  the  government  would 
nevertheless  be  certain  in  the  end.  She  would  abandon  a  government  strong 
and  able  to  protect  her,  for  one  that  is  weak,  and  that  contains,  in  the  very  ele 
ments  of  its  life,  the  seeds  of  distraction  and  early  dissolution.  She  would  adopt, 
as  the  law  of  her  existence,  the  right  of  secession — a  right  which  has  no  founda 
tion  in  jurisprudence,  or  logic,  or  in  our  political  history ;  which  Madison,  the 
father  of  the  federal  constitution,  denounced;  which  has  been  denounced  by 
most  of  the  states  and  prominent  statesmen  now  insisting  upon  its  exercise,' 
which,  in  introducing  a  principle  of  indefinite  disintegration,  cuts  up  all  confed 
erate  governments  by  the  roots,  and  gives  them  over  a  prey  to  the  caprices,  and 
passions,  and  transient  interests  of  their  members,  as  autumnal  leaves  are  given 
to  the  winds  ivhich  blow  upon  them.  In  1814,  the  Richmond  Enquirer,  then, 
as  now,  the  organ  of  public  opinion  in  the  South,  pronounced  secession  to 
be  treason,  and  nothing  else,  and  such  was  then  the  doctrine  of  Southern 
statesmen.  What  was  true  then  is  equally  true  now.  The  prevalence  of 
this  pernicious  heresy  is  mainly  the  fruit  of  that  farce  called  "  state  rights," 
which  demagogues  have  been  so  long  playing  under  tragic  mask,  and  which 
has  done  more  than  all  things  else  to  unsettle  the  foundations  of  the  re 
public,  by  estranging  the  people  from  the  federal  government,  as  one  to  be 
distrusted  and  resisted,  instead  of  being,  what  it  is,  emphatically  their  own 
creation,  at  all  times  obedient  to  their  will,  and  in  its  ministrations  the 


26  THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY. 

grandest  reflex  of  the  greatness  and  beneficence  of  popular  power  that  has 
ever  ennobled  the  history  of  our  race.  Said  Mr.  Clay:  "I  owe  a  supreme  al 
legiance  to  the  general  government,  and  to  my  state  a  subordinate  one." 
And  this  terse  language  disposes  of  the  whole  controversy  which  has  arisen 
out  of  the  secession  movement  in  regard  to  the  allegiance  of  the  citizen.  As 
the  power  of  the  states  and  federal  governnent  are  in  perfect  harmony  with 
each  other,  so  there  can  be  no  conflict  between  the  allegiance  due  to  them  ; 
each,  while  acting  within  the  sphere  of  its  constitutional  authority,  is  entitled 
to  be  obeyed ;  but  when  a  state,  throwing  off  all  constitutional  restraints, 
seeks  to  destroy  the  general  government,  to  say  that  its  citizens  are  bound 
to  follow  in  its  career  of  crime,  and  discard  the  supreme  allegiance  they  owe 
to  the  government  assailed,  is  one  of  the  shallowest  and  most  dangerous  fal 
lacies  that  has  ever  gained  credence  among  men. 

Kentucky,  occupying  a  central  position  in  the  Union,  is  now  protected 
from  the  scourge  of  a  foreign  war,  however  much  its  ravages  may  waste  the 
towns  and  cities  upon  our  coasts,  or  the  commerce  upon  our  seas ;  but  as  a 
member  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  she  would  be  a  frontier  state,  and  ne 
cessarily  the  victim  of  those  border  feuds  and  conflicts  which  have  become 
proverbial  in  history  alike  for  their  fierceness  and  frequency.  The  people  of 
the  South  now  sleep  quietly  in  their  beds,  while  there  is  not  a  home  in  infat 
uated  and  miguided  Virginia  that  is  not  filled  with  the  alarms  and  oppressed 
by  the  terrors  of  war.  In  the  fate  of  the  ancient  commonwealth,  dragged  to 
the  altar  of  sacrifice  by  those  who  should  have  stood  between  her  bosom  and 
every  foe,  Kentucky  may  read  her  own.  No  wonder,  therefore,  that  she  has 
been  so  coaxingly  besought  to  unite  her  fortunes  with  those  of  the  South,  and  to 
lay  down  the  bodies  of  her  chivalric  sons  as  a  breastivork,  behind  which  the 
Southern  people  may  be  sheltered.  Even  as  attached  to  the  Southern  Confed 
eracy,  she  would  be  weak  for  all  the  purposes  of  self-protection,  as  compared 
with  her  present  position.  But  amid  the  mutations  incident  to  such  a  help 
less  and  disintegrating  league,  Kentucky  would  probably  soon  find  herself 
adhering  to  a  mere  fiagment  of  the  Confederacy,  or  it  may  be  standing  en 
tirely  alone,  in  the  presence  of  tiers  of  free  states,  with  populations  exceed 
ing,  by  many  millions,  her  own.  Feeble  states,  thus  separated  from  power 
ful  and  warlike  neighbors  by  ideal  boundaries,  or  by  fears  as  easily  traversed 
as  rivulets,  are  as  insects  that  feed  upon  the  lion's  lip — liable  at  every  mo 
ment  to  be  crushed.  The  recorded  doom  of  multitudes  of  such,  has  left  us  a 
warning  too  solemn  and  impressive  to  be  disregarded. 

Kentucky  now  scarcely  feels  the  contribution  she  makes  to  support  the 
government  of  the  United  States,  but  as  a  member  of  the  Southern  Confed 
eracy,  of  whose  policy  free  trade  will  be  a  cardinal  principle,  she  will  be  bur 
dened  with  direct  taxation  to  the  amount  of  double,  or,  it  may  be,  triple  or 
quadruple  that  which  she  now  pays  into  her  own  treasury.  Superadded  to 
this  will  be  required  from  her  her  share  of  those  vast  outlays  necessary  for 


THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY.  27 

the  creation  of  a  navy,  the  erection  of  forts  and  custom-houses  along  a  fron 
tier  of  several  thousand  miles ;  and  for  the  maintenance  of  that  large  stand 
ing  army  which  will  be  indispensable  at  once  for  her  safety,  and  for  impart 
ing  to  the  new  government  that  strong  military  character  which,  it  has  been 
openly  avowed,  the  peculiar  institutions  of  the  South  will  inexorably  demand. 

Kentucky  now  enjoys  for  her  peculiar  institution  the  protection  of  the  Fu 
gitive  Slave  law,  loyally  enforced  by  the  government,  and  it  is  this  law, 
effective  in  its  power  of  recapture,  but  infinitely  more  potent  in  its  moral 
agency  in  preventing  the  escape  of  slaves,  that  alone  saves  that  institution 
in  the  border  states  from  utter  extinction.  She  cannot  carry  this  law  with 
her  into  the  new  Confederacy.  She  will,  virtually,  have  Canada  brought  to 
her  doors  in  the  form  of  free  states,  whose  population,  relieved  of  all  moral 
and  constitutional  obligations  to  deliver  up  fugitive  slaves,  will  stand  with 
open  arms,  inviting  and  welcoming  them,  and  defending  them,  if  need  be,  at 
the  point  of  the  bayonet.  Under  such  influences,  slavery  will  perish  rapidly 
pass  away  in  Kentucky,  as  a  ball  of  snow  would  melt  in  a  summer's  sun. 

Kentucky,  in  her  soul,  abhors  the  African  slave-trade,  and  turns  away 
with  unspeakable  horror  and  loathing  from  the  red  altars  of  King  Dahomey. 
But  although  this  traffic  has  been  temporarily  interdicted  by  the  seceded  states, 
it  is  well  understood  that  this  step  has  been  taken  as  a  mere  measure  of  policy  for 
the  purpose  of  impressing  the  border  states,  and  of  conciliating  the  European 
powers.  The  ultimate  legalization  of  this  trade,  by  a  republic  professing  to  be 
based  upon  African  servitude,  must  follow  as  certainly  as  does  the  conclusion  from 
the  premises  of  a  mathematical  proposition.  Is  Kentucky  prepared  to  see  the 
hand  upon  the  dial-plate  of  her  civilization  rudely  thrust  back  a  century,  and 
to  stand  before  the  world  the  confessed  champion  of  the  African  slave-hun 
ter?  Is  she,  with  her  unsullied  fame,  ready  to  become  a  pander  to  the  ra 
pacity  of  the  African  slave-trader,  who  burdens  the  very  winds  of  the  sea 
with  the  moans  of  the  wretched  captives  whose  limbs  he  has  loaded  with 
chains,  and  whose  hearts  he  has  broken  ?  I  do  not,  I  cannot,  believe  it. 

For  this  catalogue  of  what  Kentucky  must  suffer  in  abandoning  her 
present  honored  and  secure  position,  and  becoming  a  member  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy,  what  will  be  her  indemnity?  Nothing,  absolutely  nothing. 
The  ill-woven  ambition  of  some  of  her  sons  may  possibly  reach  the  Presi 
dency  of  the  new  republic ;  that  is  all.  Alas !  alas  !  for  that  dream  of  the 
Presidency  of  a  Southern  republic,  which  has  disturbed  so  many  pillows  in 
the  South,  and  perhaps  some  in  the  West,  also,  and  whose  lurid  light,  like  a 
demon's  torch,  is  leading  a  nation  to  perdition  ! 

The  clamor  that  in  insisting  upon  the  South  obeying  the  laws,  the  great 
principle  that  all  popular  governments  rest  upon  the  consent  of  the  governed 
is  violated,  should  not  receive  a  moment's  consideration.  Popular  govern 
ment  does,  indeed,  rest  upon  the  consent  of  the  governed,  but  it  is  upon  the 
consent.  not  of  all,  but  of  a  majority  of  the  governed.  Criminals  are  every  day 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY. 

punished,  and  made  to  obey  the  laws,  certainly  against  their  will,  and  no 
man  supposes  that  the  principle  referred  to  is  thereby  invaded.  A  bill  passed 
by  the  legislature,  by  the  majority  of  a  single  vote  only,  though  the  con 
stituents  of  all  who  voted  against  it  should  be,  in  fact  as  they  are  held  to  be 
in  theory,  opposed  to  its  provisions,  still  is  not  the  less  operative  as  a  law,  and 
no  right  of  self-government  is  thereby  trampled  upon.  The  clamor  alluded 
to  assumes  that  the  states  are  separate  and  independent  governments,  and 
that  laws  enacted  under  the  authority  of  all  may  be  resisted  and  repealed  at 
the  pleasure  of  each.  The  people  of  the  United  States,  so  far  as  the  powers 
of  the  general  government  are  concerned,  are  a  unit,  and  laws  passed  by  a 
majority  of  all  are  binding  upon  all.  The  laws  and  constitution,  however, 
which  the  South  now  resists,  have  been  adopted  by  her  sanction,  and  the 
right  she  now  claims  is  that  of  a  feeble  minority  to  repeal  what  a  majority 
has  adopted.  Nothing  could  be  more  fallacious. 

Civil  war,  under  all  circumstances,  is  a  terrible  calamity,  and  yet,  from  the 
selfish  ambition  and  wickedness  of  men,  the  best  governments  have  not  been 
able  to  escape  it.  In  regarding  that  which  has  been  forced  upon  the  gov 
ernment  of  the  United  States,  Kentucky  should  not  look  so  much  at  the 
means  which  may  be  necessarily  employed  in  its  prosecution,  as  at  the 
machinations  by  which  this  national  tragedy  has  been  brought  upon  us. 
When  I  look  upon  this  bright  land,  a  few  months  since  so  prosperous,  so 
tranquil,  and  so  free,  and  now  behold  it  desolated  by  war,  and  the  firesides 
of  its  thirty  millions  of  people  darkened,  and  their  bosoms  wrung  with  an 
guish,  and  know,  as  I  do,  that  all  this  is  the  work  of  a  score  or  two  of  men, 
who,  over  all  this  national  ruin  and  despair,  are  preparing  to  carve  with 
the  sword  their  way  to  seats  of  permanent  power,  I  cannot  but  feel  that 
they  are  accumulating  upon  their  soil  an  amount  of  guilt  hardly  equalled  in 
all  the  atrocities  of  treason  and  homicide  that  have  degraded  the  annals  of 
our  race  from  the  foundations  of  the  world.  Kentucky  may  rest  well  assured 
that  this  conflict,  which  is  one  of  self-defence,  will  le  pursued  on  the  part  of  the 
Government  in  the  paternal  spirit  in  which  a  father  seeks  to  reclaim  his  erring 
offspring.  No  conquest,  no  effusion  of  blood  is  sought.  In  sorrow,  not  in  anger, 
the  prayer  of  all  is,  that  the  end  may  be  reached  without  loss  of  life  or  waste  of 
property.  Among  the  most  powerful  instrumentalities  relied  on  for  re-estab 
lishing  the  authority  of  the  government,  is  that  of  the  Union  sentiment  of 
the  South,  sustained  by  a  liberated  press.  It  is  now  trodden  to  the  earth 
under  a  reign  of  terrorism  which  has  no  parallel  but  in  the  worst  days  of  the 
French  revolution.  The  presence  of  the  government  will  enable  it  to  re 
bound  and  look  its  oppressors  in  the  face.  At  present  we  are  assured  that 
in  the  seceded  states  no  man  expresses  an  opinion  opposed  to  the  revolu 
tion  but  at  the  hazard  of  his  life  and  property.  The  only  light  which  is  ad 
mitted  into  political  discussion  is  that  which  flashes  from  the  sword  or  gleams 
from  glistening  bayonets.  A  few  days  since,  one  of  the  United  State  Sena- 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  29 

tors  from  Virginia  published  a  manifesto,  in  which  he  announces,  with  orac 
ular  solemnity  and  severity,  that  all  citizens  who  would  not  vote  for  seces 
sion,  but  were  in  favor  of  the  Union — not  should  or  ought  to — but  "MUST 
leave  the  state."  These  words  have  in  them  decidedly  the  crack  of  the 
overseer's  whip.  The  Senator  evidently  treats  Virginia  as  a  great  negro 
quarter,  in  which  the  lash  is  the  appropriate  emblem  of  authority,  and  the 
only  argument  he  will  condescend  to  use.  However  the  freemen  of  other 
parts  of  the  state  may  abase  themselves  under  the  exercise  of  this  insolent 
and  prescriptive  tyranny,  should  the  Senator,  with  his  scourge  of  slaves,  en 
deavor  to  drive  the  people  of  Western  Virginia  from  their  homes,  I  will  only 
say,  in  the  language  of  the  narrative  of  Gilpin's  ride, 

;'  May  I  be  there  to  see !" 

It  would  certainly  prove  a  deeply  interesting  spectacle. 

It  is  true  that  before  this  deliverance  of  the  popular  mind  of  the  South 
from  the  threatenings  and  alarm  which  have  subdued  it  can  be  accomplished, 
the  remorseless  agitators  who  have  made  this  revolution,  and  now  hold  its 
reins,  must  be  discarded  alike  from  the  public  confidence  and  the  public  ser 
vice.  The  country  in  its  agony  is  feeling  their  power,  and  we  well  under 
stand  how  difficult  will  be  the  task  of  overthrowing  the  ascendency  they 
have  secured.  But  the  Union  men  of  the  South — believed  to  be  in  the  ma 
jority  in  every  seceded  state,  except,  perhaps,  South  Carolina — aided  by  the 
presence  of  the  government,  will  be  fully  equal  to  the  emergency.  Let 
these  agitators  perish,  politically,  if  need  be,  by  scores, 

"  A  breath  can  unmake  them  as  a  breath  has  made  ;" 
but  destroy  this  republic,  and 

"  Where  is  that  Promethean  heat 
That  can  its  light  relume  ?" 

Once  entombed,  when  will  the  angel  of  the  resurrection  descend  to  the 
portals  of  its  sepulchre?  There  is  not  a  voice  which  comes  to  us  from  the 
cemetery  of  nations  that  does  not  answer:  "Never,  never!"  Amid  the  tor 
ments  of  perturbed  existence,  we  may  have  glimpses  of  rest  and  of  freedom, 
as  the  maniac  has  glimpses  of  reason  between  the  paroxysms  of  his  madness, 
but  we  shall  attain  to  neither  national  dignity  nor  national  repose.  We  shall 
be  a  mass  of  jarring,  warring,  fragmentary  states,  enfeebled  and  demoralized, 
without  power  at  home,  or  respectability  abroad,  and,  like  the  republics  of 
Mexico  and  South  America,  we  will  drift  away  on  a  shoreless  and  ensan 
guined  sea  of  civil  commotion,  from  which,  if  the  teachings  of  history  are  to 
be  trusted,  we  shall  finally  be  rescued  by  the  iron  hand  of  some  military 
wrecker,  who  will  coin  the  shattered  elements  of  our  greatness  and  of  our 
strength  in  a  diadem  and  a  throne.  Said  M.  FOULD,  the  great  French  states 
man,  to  an  American  citizen,  a  few  weeks  since :  "  Your  republic  is  dead, 


30  THE  FALLACY  OF  NEUTRALITY. 

and  it  is  probably  the  last  the  world  will  ever  see.  You  will  have  a  reign  of 
terrorism,  and  after  that  two  or  three  monarchies."  All  this  may  be  verified 
should  this  revolution  succeed. 

Let  us,  then,  twine  each  thread  of  the  glorious  tissue  of  our  country's  flag 
about  our  heart-strings,  and  looking  upon  our  homes  and  catching  the  spirit 
that  breathes  upon  us  from  the  battle-fields  of  our  fathers,  let  us  resolve, 
that,  come  weal  or  woe,  we  will,  in  life  and  in  death,  now  and  forever,  stand 
by  the  stars  and  the  stripes.  They  have  floated  over  our  cradles,  let  it  be  our 
prayer  and  our  struggle  that  they  shall  float  over  our  graves.  They  have 
been  unfurled  from  the  snows  of  Canada  to  the  plains  of  New  Orleans,  to  the 
halls  of  the  Montezumas,  and  amid  the  solitudes  of  every  sea ;  and  every 
where,  as  the  luminous  symbol  of  resistless  and  beneficent  power,  they  have 
led  the  brave  and  the  free  to  victory  and  to  glory.  It  has  been  my  fortune  to 
look  upon  this  flag  in  foreign  lands,  and  amid  the  gloom  of  an  oriental  des 
potism,  and  right  well  do  I  know,  by  contrast,  how  bright  are  its  stars,  and 
how  sublime  are  its  inspirations !  If  this  banner,  the  emblem  for  us  of  all 
that  is  grand  in  human  history,  and  of  all  that  'is  transporting  in  human  hope, 
is  to  be  sacrificed  on  the  altars  of  a  Satanic  ambition,  and  thus  disappear  for 
ever  amid  the  night  and  tempest  of  revolution,  then  will  I  feel — and  who 
shall  estimate  the  desolation  of  that  feeling? — that  the  sun  has  indeed  been 
stricken  from  the  sky  of  our  lives,  and  that  henceforth  we  shall  be  but  wan 
derers  and  outcasts,  with  naught  but  the  bread  of  sorrow  and  penury  for  our 
lips,  and  with  hands  ever  outstretched  in  feebleness  and  supplication,  on 
which,  in  any  hour,  a  military  tyrant  may  rivet  the  fetters  of  a  despairing 
bondage.  May  God  in  his  infinite  mercy  save  you  and  me,  and  the  land  we 
so  much  love,  from  the  doom  of  such  a  degradation. 

No  contest  so  momentous  as  this  has  arisen  in  human  history,  for,  amid 
all  the  conflicts  of  men  and  of  nations,  the  life  of  no  such  government  as 
ours  has  ever  been  at  stake.  Our  fathers  won  our  independence  by  the 
blood  and  the  sacrifices  of  a  seven  years'  war,  and  we  have  maintained  it 
against  the  assaults  of  the  greatest  power  upon  the  earth ;  and  the  question 
now  is,  whether  we  are  to  perish  by  our  own  hands,  and  have  the  epitaph 
of  suicide  written  upon  our  tomb  ?  The  ordeal  through  which  we  are  pass 
ing  must  involve  immense  suffering  and  losses  for  us  all,  but  the  expenditure 
of  not  merely  hundreds  of  millions,  but  of  billions  of  treasure,  will  be  well 
made,  if  the  result  will  be  the  preservation  of  our  institutions. 

Could  my  voice  reach  every  dwelling  in  Kentucky,  I  would  implore  its 
inmates — if  they  would  not  have  the  rivers  of  their  prosperity  shrink  away, 
as  do  unfed  streams  beneath  the  summer  heats — to  rouse  themselves  from 
their  lethargy,  and  fly  to  the  rescue  of  their  country,  before  it  is  everlastingly 
too  late.  Man  should  appeal  to  man,  and  neighborhood  to  neighborhood, 
until  the  electric  fires  of  patriotism  shall  flash  from  heart  to  heart  in  one 
unbroken  current  throughout  the  land.  It  is  a  time  in  which  the  workshop, 


THE    FALLACY    OF    NEUTRALITY.  31 

the  office,  the  counting-house,  and  the  field,  may  well  be  abandoned  for  the 
solemn  duty  that  is  upon  us,  for  all  these  toils  will  but  bring  treasure,  not 
for  ourselves,  but  for  the  spoiler,  if  this  revolution  is  not  arrested. 

We  are  all,  with  our  every  earthly  interest,  embarked  in  mid-ocean  on  the 
same  common  deck.  The  howl  of  the  storm  is  in  our  ears,  and  "  the  lightning1  s 
red  glare  is  painting  hell  on  the  sky ;"  while  the  noble  ship  pitches  and  rolls 
under  the  lashings  of  the  waves,  the  cry  is  heard  that  she  has  sprung  a  leak  at 
many  points,  and  that  the  rushing  waters  are  mounting  rapidly  in  the  hold.  The 
man  who,  in  such  an  hour,  will  not  work  at  the  pumps,  is  either  a  maniac 
or  a  monster. 

Sincerely  yours, 

JOSEPH  HOLT. 


ELEGANTLY   ILLUSTRATED   EDITION 

OF 

COOPER'S    NOVELS. 

EMBELLISHED  WITH  FIVE  HUNDRED  ORIGINAL  DRAWINGS 

By  F.  O.  C.  DARLEY. 


This  beautiful  Edition  of  COOPER'S  WORKS  was  commenced  February  1st, 
1859,  and  will  be  completed  in  THIRTY-TWO  MONTHS  from  that  date,  a 
volume  containing  a  novel  complete,  being  published  on  the  first  of  each 
month.  The  volumes  are  uniform  in  size  'and  binding,  and  each  contains 
Two  ENGRAVINGS  ON  STEEL,  and  TWEI^VE~  SKETCHES  ON  WOOD,  designed  by 
DARLEY,  expressly  for  this  editioiv-uiid  engraved  by  the  FIRST  ARTISTS  OF 
rue  COUNTRY. 

THE    SERIES    EMBRACES: 

THE    PIONEERS,  LIONEL    LINCOLN.  JACK  TIER, 

RED    UOVER,  THE   SEA   LIONS,  THE   RED   SK/NS, 

LAST  OF  Till:  MOHICANS,  THE    WATER   WITCH,  THE   TWO  ADMIRALS, 

THE   SPY,  HOMEWARD   BOUND,  THE    HEIDENMAUER, 

U'YANDOTTE,  THE   MONIKINS,  MERCEDES   OF   CASTILE, 

THE    BRAVO,  HOME   AS   FOUND,  OAK    OPENINGS, 

THE  PILOT.  SATANSTOE,  AFLOAT   AND   ASHORE, 

WEPT  OF  WISli-TON-WISH,  WING    AND   WING,  MILES   WALLINGFORD, 

THE    HEADSMAN,  THE   CHAINBEARER,  THE   CRATER, 

THE    PRAIRIE,  THE  PATHFINDER,  THE  WAYS   OF  THE  HOUR, 
PRECAUTION',            THE   DEERSLAYER. 

The  first  Fifteen  Volumes  are  issued  in  the  aboVe  order;  the  remainder 
will  follow  the  same  arrangement  as  nearly  as  possible.  As  a 


the  publication  of  this  edition  exceeds,  both  in  magnitude  and  importance, 
any  thing  oi'tbe  kind  before  undertaken  in  this  country.  COOPER  has  been 
'ustly  «tyled 

"THE    GREAT    AMERICAN    NOVELIST," 

and  the  Publishers  believe  they  have  not  mistaken  the  tastes  of  his  country 
men  in  offering  them  this  complete  and  elegant  edition  of  his  Works. 

Publishing  by  subscription,  .at  $1  50  per  volume,  for  which  they  will  hi 
sent,  post-paid,  to  any  address  in  the  United  States,  under  3,000  miles.  The 
work  ca«  be  obtained  from  local  agents  (generally  the  principal  Booksellers) 
iu  all  the  large  cities. 

BOOKSELLERS  and  others  desiring  an  Agency  where  none  has  beet 
established,  can  ascertain  terms,  &c.,  by  addressing"  the  Publishers. 

JAMES  G.  GREGORY,  Publisher, 

(SUCCESSOR  TO  w.  A.  TOWNSEND  &  on..) 

NO    46  WALKKK  PTRKET,  N.  Y. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


22 


NOV  1  5  1983 


cm.  NOV21 


LD  21-100m.9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


IN     1-I1ESS. 

THE  AMERICAN  FLAG- :  BY  JOSEPH  RODMAN  DRAKE. 
Illustrated  by  F.  0.  C.  Darler,  und  issued  in  style  similar  to  "  The 
Star  Spangled  Banner."  -  - 

PATRIOTIC  AND   HEROIC   ELOQUENCE:  A 

Volume  of  Prose    and    Poetical   Extracts   from    the    Speeches   .'aid 
\Vritingsof  Distinguished  Men.     12mo.,  Cloth.     Price,  75  cents. 


Holt,   Joseph. 
The  fallal  *y- 
rali- 


nout- 


MZ07966 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


